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** spoiler alert ** 3.25-ish This book was a wild ride. And I have a lot to say about it ��

At one point I thought I thought I might actually hate this book. But by the end it had some redeeming qualities. I saved several strong quotes from the book. Honestly I feel like this book would make an interesting tv show. Like “Friends�� if everyone did cocaine lol. There’s a LOT of cocaine very casually through this whole book.

The character issues are very human and realistic when you’re dealing with toxic relationships on top of major substance abuse issues. Almost everyone in the book had a major problem and are barely likable for a lot of the story. Santiago seems genuinely kind, and surprisingly the “sugar daddy�� friend, Jiro that Zoe meets seems genuinely kind too.

The way the book bounces around from different character perspectives is good, however I really wish the author would have labeled the transitions with the name of who we are reading from, a few times it took me a moment to realize whose POV I was in, especially when it would jump to Eleanor’s.

I HATED everything to do with the sugar glider tragedy. Sugar gliders are actually not easy pets to care for and aren’t supposed to be purchased without a companion. But I digress with the technicality of that. The way the sugar glider died though was just gross to me. I hated it so much and it made me wanna quit the book. The description of it just felt unnecessary yet then it just totally skips over the process of Frank having to tell Cleo which I feel like was probably a major important breaking point in their relationship as Frank’s issues caused the death of her loved pet. They later address it with how Cleo covers for Frank’s mistake in its death by saying it got lost. #justiceforjesus

I didn’t love the way certain more vulgar sexual things were described and randomly thrown in, like Anders at the restaurant in the bathroom while with his exes son. Just super random and uncomfortable. Or how the teen son described when he did with his girlfriend to Anders.

There’s time jumps and loose ends I would have liked to see more fleshed out but at the end I like Cleo and Franks mature exchange of acknowledgement that they are not meant to be. Frank’s sobriety and Cleo distancing herself from the city and people who fed into her depression were the right choices.
I still don’t know how I feel about him and Eleanor but it seemed very real in a sense of how that all played out.

Anyways, the book is a big fat hot mess of toxic people, doing shitty things to eachother and in the ends provides hope for most of them. I loved parts of it and hated others but maybe that was the purpose of the book.