Let’s start with Kenna, because that’s where everything falls apart.

In a redemption arc, the protagonist is usually someone you can root for. Maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault. Maybe they fell on the sword to protect someone else. Maybe the whole thing is really a story about finding the real culprit. Kenna is none of that. Kenna is 1000% at fault, and the book seems to think I’ll feel for her anyway. I don’t. I feel nothing but irritation, and that irritation only grows as character after character lines up to forgive her.

Walk through what she actually did. She knew she was drunk. She chose to drive regardless. She drove recklessly enough to cause the accident in the first place — and cars these days are genuinely good at absorbing impact and preventing fatal injuries unless you’re really flying. So the speed wasn’t incidental. And then, the part I cannot move past: she finds Scotty bleeding, decides on her own that he’s dead, doesn’t call an ambulance, and leaves. She’s found asleep in her own apartment the next day. He bled out over roughly six hours. She could have called for help and chose not to. I’m speechless. This is not a character who deserves an ounce of sympathy from anyone, and yet the entire book is built on the assumption that she does.

The single most reasonable thing in the whole story is that Scotty’s parents immediately get full custody of Diem (and side note — what a name. It literally just means “day,” it’s not the profound little gift the book treats it as) and deny Kenna even visitation. Good. That’s some form of justice. Finally. And then… they reverse the decision. After reading a few letters. That’s it. A handful of sappy, not-even-well-written letters, and they decide to set aside the death of their son and move on. Could it possibly be more convenient? That is not how grief works, that is not how people work, and the moment I read it I was shocked, disappointed, and genuinely angry. That’s the exact point it dropped to a two-star read for me, and it only fell further from there.

Now Logan. What a spectacularly bad friend. He hooks up with the woman who killed (and yes, at this point I’ll call it killed — maybe not cold-blooded murder, but it sure wasn’t a blameless accident) his best friend. I can forgive the first half of it, because he genuinely didn’t know who she was — her appearance had changed a lot over the years and he’d never actually met her. Fine. But once he finds out? Cut all ties, my guy. Where does this need to be the knight in shining armour come from, this compulsion to save a soul that hasn’t earned saving? And even if he insists on helping her, the absolute floor is don’t get physically involved. A crush is one thing. A crush is never so overwhelming that it becomes irresistible and consequence-free. That’s not romance, it’s a failure of character and a total disregard for what it does to Diem and to Scotty’s parents. And then he goes further and hands over Diem’s photos to Kenna — a flat-out violation of the family’s privacy that the book frames as sweet.

There is not one thing here I’d defend on the plot front. It lurches from one baffling decision to the next, and by the end I was disgusted with every single major character. I have nothing to recommend it on.