I don't feel like much of an adult, although I have most of the things that define modern middle-class adulthood*. I have a place of my own, a job that I love, a happy relationship, a car that's nearly paid off, and ample opportunities to pursue my hobbies. I am ridiculously fortunate. But I still don't know what the hell I'm doing most days and the older I get, the more I realize that the other adults around me is in the same boat. There's a weird sort of comfort to this--we don't know what we're doing together!--mingled with a sense of terror--wait, so nobody knows what they're doing? This realization is often accompanied by the equally astounding revelation that your parents are not quite the people that you thought them to be when you were a kid**. They, too, fall under the umbrella of being adults who don't know what they're doing. 
 (*Middle-class white adulthood, for that matter. Allow me to check my privilege and all of its various side effects.) 
 (**For some people this comes earlier in life. For others, I'm not sure if the realization ever happens.) 
 And isn't that a little horrifying? That the people who raised you are a little clueless? I don't mean to be flippant. Everybody is genuinely a little bit clueless. Hello, human condition. So what comes next? How do you go from there or even begin to consider adding your own children into the mix? That process of learning that your parents are imperfect adults is crucial before you can step into your own imperfect adulthood. 
 Jean Louise Finch at twenty-six is fiercely independent, as you might have guessed. She's making her way in New York and dealing with the death of (view spoiler)[Jem. This part is frankly more unforgiveable than the Atticus stuff. Lee gives context for the death, though. He died of heart problems, just like their mother. His absence is a hole in your chest. Same with Dill, too, who's off cavorting in Italy. This ended up being a very long spoiler tag, sorry about that. (hide spoiler)] Jean Louise is only ever called Scout by a handful of people when she makes her yearly visit to Maycomb. There's romance (and a lot of kissing!) with Henry, the perpetual boy next door. He's slated to follow in Atticus' legislative footsteps. Henry views his relationship with Jean Louise as a certainty; she sees it as more of a pleasant burden. They lack the spark that Scout and Dill shared as kids, at least as much as you can have chemistry while in elementary school. It really is a shame that Dill is mentioned here as "the friend of her heart," but it makes sense. Today, it would be just the sort of fan service that would end up in the Kickstarter version of this sequel, much like Veronica Mars and Logan Echolls. (NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING.) 
 The single most astonishing thing about this novel is how modern it feels. From Jean Louise's questions about what her position as a woman means in a changing society to how the US Government treats PoCs, there is so much that hits home in 2015. Either Harper Lee was strangely prescient or we haven't made as much progress as we thought we have. For this reason alone, I think it's a good thing that the book got published. (But more on that later.) Jean Louise needs to be living now and writing for The Toast or The Hairpin because that is actually where she belongs. It's a testament to Lee's writing and to the character of Scout Finch that the Jean Louise of Go Set a Watchman is still undeniably the girl we once knew as Scout. I don't think most writers would be able to pull off a twenty-year gap quite so effectively. 
 And then, of course, there's the big fat reveal that Atticus Finch is not the upstanding paragon of equality that we thought him to be. Scout reacts to this revelation by completing losing her shit. Sorry for the language, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. Atticus himself is arthritic these days and increasingly set in his ways. He is still a paragon for the clear cut, so-called justice of the legal system, but he takes the easy way out when it comes to standing up for true equality. Scout confronts him and he is so sure that he is right. The system is flawed, but he's not about to change it, and therefore it keeps being flawed. There is some real heartbreak in these pages, particularly in a brief scene when Scout goes to talk to Calpurnia. Scout begins to see her father as what he really is, which is both a human being and a racist human being. The first is shocking, while the other is sickening. From Atticus's perspective, the confrontation could be his chance to see Scout as a grown-up, too--as Jean Louise. (He does call her Jean Louise in the book, but he's the one who most frequently slips into calling her Scout, which is telling.) Unfortunately, he never takes that chance and the book ends too abruptly to consider anything otherwise. There are shades of this Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, like when he talks about the Klan being mostly a business arrangement, but since TKAM is written from the perspective of Jean Louise recalling how Scout felt about the world, we get a more filtered view of the man himself. 
 So...is the book any good? It's kind of a mess, but it's a really lovely mess. The story doesn't progress beyond a straight telling of Scout's visit back home. TKAM has all of these gorgeous intertwining threads and symbolism and since this was intended to be unpublished, she obviously didn't take the time to work in all of that stuff. It's not weak, though it's definitely not strong. There are phrases and descriptions that are so incredibly Lee's style and those make the reading experience worth it. You'll recognize certain paragraphs that were lifted from GSAW and worked into TKAM. The absolute best sections are the ones where she writes about childhood memories and it's easy to see why her editor wanted her to focus on a book from that perspective*. There are two in particular--one while Scout is in sixth grade and one while she's in ninth grade--that are undeniably worth the price of admission. The messy parts feel voyeuristic and unearned, like we shouldn't be reading those bits. Readers who don't have an affection for TKAM probably shouldn't bother with this, as I fear it will reduce the value of TKAM should they ever decide to come around. But if you love TKAM, Go Set a Watchman is at the very least a fascinating look behind Lee's mindset. At the very most, it is a heart-breaking continuation of Maycombian life. 
 (*There are cameos by a slew of TKAM characters, including an extended look at Uncle Jack and his cat, Rose Aylmer.) 
 So...should it have been published? I don't know. I feel kind of icky about the whole thing. I mean, I still bought it off of Amazon so I'm part of the problem here. Use your best judgment. I can't help but feel that there must have been a slightly better way to go about the whole thing and if that involved the book never being published, I would have lived with that just fine. But it was published and I am intensely curious, so here we are. Maybe part of my affection for GSAW comes from reading it now as an adult after being exposed to TKAM when I was practically still a child. I don't think I'll re-read this every few years, like I do with TKAM, but I'm awfully glad I got to read it. I am, and forever will be, beyond grateful for Jean Louise "Scout" Finch. 
 {4.5 stars}