Kind of eh
I am still trying to figure out what I thought about this one - and I can't put it on either the love it or hate it list. I'm just a big ball of meh.
It think the main problem is that it didn't know what it wanted to be. Did it want to be Ella coming to terms with her scarring? Or Ella's realizations regarding illusion versus reality? It wanted to be both and didn't quite manage to do them both effectively. Throw in family dynamics, friend dynamics, and a host of secondary characters that are more like mannequins and...yeah.
I wanted to love Alex and Ella together but every time we got close, chapters of fake history about a fake painter...and totally pulled me out of the story.
I will give her this much - she pretty much nailed the dynamics around an Italian family. Whenever the Marino clan was together, it was like being back at Grandma's house for Thanksgiving.
