Beautiful but painful.  This is a painful story about grief, depression, addiction, doubt, race and family pain.  But written so beautifully it is haunting.  The structure and plot itself is nothing unique a slice of life story with a slow pace.  But the narrative is written from the POV of Gifty through her past, present and diary entries.  This allows you to fully sympathise with her and her families struggles and crushing pain.  It is a great way to see the history, motivation and development of a character.  I was interested in the multi-faceted angle addiction was covered, but was surprised at the lack of anger towards the doctor/pharmaceutical companies that played a part, it surprised me how normalised the prescription of Oxycontin is that even in a book about addiction it is not blamed any more than anything else.  I think the biggest success of this is the autobiographical nature of the writing, plot and character motivations, it adds such emotion and realism it makes it difficult to not be deeply moved.