I listened to most of this on audio, and the narrator and plot kept me interested. I like Flynn's writing - not the plot so much as her observations about humans and daily life, though the plot was fine too. It's frustrating to have characters you want to like make such bad choices. The one thing that annoyed me on audio was the reading of the single carved words - it felt over-the-top. The ending was a bit of a surprise, but not really.