As my boyfriend remarked the other day, I have been nursing this one for a long time. Finally finished it last night, and it was well worth it.
There are a lot of plots going on in this book, and Santos juggles them all deftly. A boy raised without knowing the identity of his father, a woman dying of cancer, a best friend who learns to love in the midst of tragedy and a young couple eagerly welcoming a baby into their lives... It could have just ended up as a piecemeal, trite novel, but thankfully it doesn't. Santos is a talented poet, and her language and balance are perfect.
For example, isn't this lovely? "Dev loved talking to Clare, but all the time they talked, he looked at her and wondered what he had wondered before, about museum guards and Inuits: how you got used to so much beauty or if you ever did. Like how a person could just go about his ordinary life--salmon fishing, dogsled driving, or whatever--with the northern lights hanging in the sky above his head." (311)
Can you tell that another quarter of graduate school has ended? The shorter and shorter blog posts, and then utter silence for weeks... Well, but for one assignment, the new quarter has begun, and I'm full of hope that I'll stay caught up, nay, ahead, of the assignments for my spring classes. Just go ahead and try to quell my good intentions--go on now, I dare ya!
I've still been reading, but it's been light reading. Light like reading your fortune from stale fortune cookies light. I will not even talk about them--they were good and satisfying when you know what to expect, and the covers let you know what to expect. Not that I mean that in a bad way--it's like how we (or at least many among us) turn on "What not to wear" for a bit of 
evening television escapism. You know the routine--the frumpy clothes, the shock and horror of the hosts, the frustration of the frump-ee the day after her first shopping trip, the traumatic haircut by Nick, and finally, the glorious reveal to family and friends--Ta dah! Another chic soccer mom is rehabilitated, ready to be released back into the suburban wilds!
As my boyfriend remarked the other day, I have been nursing this one for a long time. Finally finished it last night, and it was well worth it.
