***I have tried to avoid spoilers. If you have read the book, you know how difficult that can be in this case. If you haven't, you might be well advised to just check it out first, and come back to the reviews later... I REALLY liked it, and will try to walk the tightrope of discussing it without giving it away.. 
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 There is a key moment very early in this book - a flashback to Alison at age 6. She is watching her mom washing dishes, and seeing a trail of gold stars when the cutlery clinks. This visual sensation is very beautiful to Alison, but she has no idea that there is anything unusual about it. 
 She asks for more of the gold stars, and the shock of her mom's violent and angry reaction is a defining moment in Alison's life. Her mom's orders are very clear. There are No stars. Alison is never to mention them, or anything like them to anyone, ever! People will think she is crazy! Allison's mom thinks so too, while her dad is intelligent but basically clueless on this issue: 
 "My father was a sweet man, but most of the time he acted like his body was only there to keep his brain from dragging on the ground." 
 For Alison, this moment changes everything about her relations with other people. She can never reveal those special perceptions. But they continue and grow more complex as she reaches her teens, a product of some unusual circuitry in her brain and eyes. (I will save other comments on this point for later discussion, if others are interested) 
 "You know how when some people first take up painting they don't know how to mix colors properly, and all their pictures end up looking all garish and cheap? It's like that when I watch TV." 
 I bought into Alison's defining, traumatic moment - it made sense to me. A childhood trauma takes away the simple joy of a beautiful set of perceptions, and turns them into a continuing nightmare. Intimidated by her mother's outraged warning, Alison lives and builds much of her life around these perceptions, but knows she must keep them hidden or society will cast her aside. 
 But what drives much of the story is an even more horrifying turn of events, and the aftermath of this incident puts her in the psychiatric institution that her mother had feared all along. The book begins with her in this institution, piecing together the story (in first person) through her own deep confusion about what really happened, and what is or is not wrong with her. This confusion is a core element of the story - it makes everything she sees, thinks and does highly suspicious, to herself and to everyone around her. 
 "So I pushed the bitterness down, into the black pit of my stomach along with my regret and my grief and my fear, and I said, "I'm fine. May I go now?" " 
 The plot twists and turns from this point, and pieces/parts have been carefully indicated in all the reviews that I read. Nearly all of it worked extremely well for me. Having bought into the tortured but exotic inner world of Allison, I was prepared for the tortuous saga that followed. I anticipated some of the twists, though certainly not all. But I enjoyed the story greatly, right through to the end. 
 Your mileage may vary. A lot of trusted reviewers/friends had issues with this one, and it may just not work for you. What is really tricky is that serious readers will react in very different ways to the characters and the twists. I get that. 
 Here is the way I think of it. I love authors who can define a 'world' and make it work. Authors who follow their artistic vision and put it out there as they see it. The world could be almost anything - physical, psychological, pure fantasy, etc. And yes, things can change dramatically as the story rolls along. 
 For me, the 'success' of that world is not so much about what is in it, or even how it works, but how skillful the author is in depicting it. What I am judging is whether the creation hangs together for me. Is it internally consistent? Is the writing clear and moving? Do I care about the characters? Does the story gain momentum and then hold it? 
 In the hands of a lesser writer, I don't think that any part of this story would have drawn me in or held my interest. But Anderson's writing scored strong positives on all of my criteria. I raced through it to see what would happen next. My pulse was pounding at many points in the story. In the end, I cared strongly about several of the characters and was satisfied with the outcome. 
 Thinking back, what I really enjoyed throughout was the skillful maneuvering of observation, inference and the unsettling new facts. For me, it was a marvelous excursion to see events unfold through the lens of Alison's confusion, mental instability and her extraordinary perceptions. I was particularly impressed by the deft handling of shifting relationships among the characters, as the stereotyped certainties of one chapter became the deeper and more complex truths of the next. I would definitely read it again. 
 Very Highly Recommended. 
 Special thanks to Wendy Darling for her excellent review and recommendation. 
 There are many other exceptional reviews of this book, but the one by Crowinator really resonated with my own take.