I wanted to give up on this book about a fifth of the way in because I read reviews that the second half was a bit grim and from what I could tell, I thought it was going to be too grim for my liking. However, I had really enjoyed Gingerbread by the same author and I bought this book new, so I forced myself to keep going. Boy am I glad I did.

For me, an ending can knock off a whole star from my rating or pull it up by one. So while I felt the writing wasn't as fluid and the descriptions of the flowers and such got a bit tiresome, the ending was so satisfying I was smiling when I closed the book.