So I have to give a negative review to an acclaimed book, which is already going to make people in the comments cite acclaim over my opinion, or bring up the argument that I just don't get it... 
 But I got it, and I'm kind of disgusted by this book. 
 So this book is about the relationship between a literal child and an adult man, and it is meant to horrify you. But it's also been described as *beautiful* or *modern lolita* and once again, that is as horrifying than any man lusting after a fourteen year old. 
 And for the argument that it's not your typical story of pedophilia, because you as a reader are supposed to be the one with the moral barometer, it's about the intense relationship between these two characters, my main argument is; the framing of the abuser. He'll get laid if someone wants to have sex with him. He's ugly. Drunk women who are trying to get revenge on the drug dealer they're all screwing will take him to bed, but he won't initiate and he tries really hard to get them to like it. He has sex with an underage girl only after she spends hundreds of pages climbing into his bed and parading her hormones around. If this is a story that's just about two people, why is the person seen as the attacker in most cases so fucking castrated and the victim the oldest, wisest, most enthusiastically consenting soul who is being abused worse by the authority figures in her life. 
 Not many people have mentioned in reviews the racial trope of the largest, ugliest, gentlest brown man and the tiniest, purest, wisest white girl; but it's so glaring and insensitive here that you have this Native American guy treated like an unintelligent oaf and the little girl doing all the thinking for him. Her whiteness is a huge part of his obsession with her, their first meeting is him crashing a motorcycle and her tending his injuries and it's all "are you an angel?" kind of shit that made the post-colonial theory student in me gag. And once again, this is the extreme you have to push it to in order to make it look like a devoted melding of two souls; if he was any smarter, it would look too much like he was grooming her for the culminating sexual relationship, and if she were any more naive, she would be a more obvious victim. Not that these things still aren't true, but they are fogged by this problematic framing. 
 You can write a horrific relationship. But when you blur these narrative lines, where female judges and family members who tried to help a victim are treated like horrible bitches who don't recognize real love, you're doing some damning work. And the ending to me is the most horrifying, because the abuser and the victim are living happily ever after, and there are these disgusting, double-edged implications where she's now in her 20's and she looks just like she did at 14 so is he a pedophile if their love just so transcendent. I don't care about reasons, or backstory, or psychiatric diagnosis. It's still totally wrong and scary. 
 You don't "Devil's Advocate" for the abuse of a literal child because in some cases the child is an old soul and it's true love. You don't box this narrative into charming little romantic moments built on the longing for a literal child. You don't treat every rational person who was trying to help this literal child get away from the man lusting after her innocence like they're a bunch of stuffy houseguests who need to lighten up. And guess what? Some people are stupid. I'm smart enough to go in as a reader and not shake in my foundation over a man falling in love with an underage girl, and knowing that the story of her going back to him is a tragic one. But not every reader is smart enough to deduce that, and is the subject you want to apply a gray morality to really the sexual assault of a 14 year old? There's such a focus on her willing consent, and how maybe the law isn't right. The law isn't the problem. The character's definition of consent is. 
 There's this argument that's going to come up "They're not hurting anyone! Haven't they been through enough? They make each other happy!" 
 I'm not wavering. It might have been different if he waited until she was legal, or even in some states the age of consent is 16, but this was at 14. Nope. I'm not budging. Wavy's life is ruined and she is now trapped with someone she was horny for at age 12, and is too paralyzed developmentally to ever move beyond that. Her finding love in her abuser isn't a hopeful ending to me. It is the saddest fucking thing I have ever read, and that can be a good story in itself, but the narrative openly mocks every character who has the common sense to view it that way. It's not like watching a train crash, it's like getting a bird's eye view to the train conductor frantically trying to stop a train crash, to no avail. 
 And if that's all I was supposed to get out of it, and I already felt that way about a subject that is incredibly black and white to me, why does this book even exist?