Enh.

Neffinger's follow-up to the Time Traveller's Wife is not as original, and twists the reader's expectations to provide an undeserved surprise ending. Characters think and do things in the first couple of chapters that turn out to be red herrings meant to mislead the reader by the end.

Furthermore, the constant habit of providing the character's thoughts in italics beside their speech instead of doing the work of letting the words themselves and the character's actions carry the subte... (show more)

Enh.

Neffinger's follow-up to the Time Traveller's Wife is not as original, and twists the reader's expectations to provide an undeserved surprise ending. Characters think and do things in the first couple of chapters that turn out to be red herrings meant to mislead the reader by the end.

Furthermore, the constant habit of providing the character's thoughts in italics beside their speech instead of doing the work of letting the words themselves and the character's actions carry the subtext is cute once or twice, but is lazy and quickly becomes annoying; and the transitions between point-of-view characters are awkward and clumsy and I frequently found myself lost.

I was also hoping for her to do more with the Blakean reference in the title (Tyger Tyger, by William Blake, if anyone is curious). No luck. Yes she grabs onto the duality of twins and divides them nicely between nice/not nice evil/good, but then doesn't do anything with it. Argh.

It's not a bad book, but it's not a great book, and I expected more from Neffinger after her fabulous debut. (show less)