When Nuance Gets Lost

A Sky Full of Love by Lorna Lewis

Amazon First Reads Pick for May

Pages: 371 Genre: literary fiction

Rating: 1.5 Star

Kindle Notes & Highlights

Fifteen years ago, Nova was kidnapped, and she thought her life with her husband, Quinton, and her baby daughter, Skye, was over. Now, her captor is dead, and she gets to return to the life she thought was out of her reach Except, now, everything is different. Quinton has remarried to Leah, Nova's sister. Everyone's joy to have Nova back also comes with uncertainty about secrets and feelings people have been burying.

Full disclosure: I started this book at the very beginning of the month, and then I didn't pick it up again until just recently. I was just never that engaged with it. The concept was super cool, and there were certainly moments that I liked. Overall, unfortunately, I found the characters very unlikable and the writing not strong enough to make up for it.

Nova was an interesting main character. Exploring the trauma around her capture and survival, as well as the uncertainty about being back in a world that looks completely different was interesting. I felt really compelled to support her, both because of her situation (obviously), but more importantly because the rest of the adults in the story were horrible.

I understand the idea. I get that we were going for a story full of nuance. When I read the description, I actually did feel a lot of sympathy for Leah and the awkward situation she was in. However, the book seemed determined to get rid of all kind feelings I had for her. Leah was awful. She was selfish and jealous and only ever cared about herself, despite telling me how much she put her own needs aside for other people. I was willing to see this whole situation with more nuance than she was, and considering half the book was from her POV, it was exhausting.

Nobody else was that much better. The primary adults in Nova's life are Leah, Quinton (the husband), Mama/Martha (Leah and Nova's mom), and Lance (Nova's childhood friend). The first three are all terrible to Nova. Her mom was better, but most of the time they only cared about helping Nova so far as it benefitted them. Everyone was more concerned with maintaining their own comfort level than with looking out for Nova. And again: I understand the intended nuance here. But it didn't feel very nuanced, it just felt selfish of everyone. A family member basically coming back from the dead is going to disrupt life regardless of any marriages that may have happened in the meantime, but no one seemed to want to accept that. Nova was forced to grow and learn, but no one else was. It was a disservice to the intended story.

Also, I don't blame Leah and Quinton for getting married (even if the Hamlet-loving part of my brain doesn't like it very much). But I do blame Quinton for being a gross misogynist who was controlling and possessive of all the women in his life, including Skye, who is 17 in the current time.

On that note, this book had a lot of weirdly conservative moments that I just wasn't rocking with. This includes Quinton's casual misogyny, but there were also things like seeing divorce as a failure of the marriage (despite the divorced character in question clearly explaining otherwise), vaguely supporting the idea of marital gender roles, judgement of mental healthcare (which is weird since Leah is a therapist), and a really bizarre subplot about Quinton not letting Skye cut her hair. It was just enough for me to clock it as odd.

The writing also left a lot to be desired. I kept wanting the author to trust me as a reader to understand what she's trying to show me in certain scenes. It was partially an issue of telling instead of showing, but it was also just overexplaining. I'm an active reader willing to analyze and infer without the author outlining every thought, feeling, and emotion for me.

I also think it would've been better to explore more conflicts than just the marriage love triangle. As it was, this plot was overdrawn and over-explored. We did also spend a decent amount of time on Skye and her relationship with her mom and Leah, but most of that came from Leah's whining. I just would've liked to have seen more.

Overall, this book had a lot of potential that it just didn't live up to. While the concept was interesting, the actual execution was not very engaging, and all the intended nuance was lost to a selfish narrator.