Everything I Never Told You Pt2
I know I said I would update the original post when I finished the book, but... My opinion on it changed ever so slightly. At least, it changed enough to warrant an entirely different post on the book!
I don't know if Lydia Lee is stupid or actually wanted to kill herself. On one hand, she went into the middle of a lake, on a boat, in the middle of the night, and stepped out of the boat without knowing how to swim. Sounds like a suicide. On the other hand, she was actively planning what she would be doing the next day, like apologizing to Jack, and fixing everything in her life. She said she'd swim to the dock, but there's no way any person with a brain would jump into the water in the middle of a lake without knowing how to swim unless they wanted to die.
I wonder if she thought all those things and found it impossible to do, after all, and that's why she stepped out of the boat. At some point the word "will" changed to "would." I don't know if it was significant, but... it could have signified a change in her thinking. Then again, I feel like the wording is wrong for her to have thought of suicide. I feel as if she genuinely meant to swim back to the dock... But I still refuse to believe anyone could be so stupid.
This aside, somebody should've told me Jack had feelings for Nath. This book would've been so much less torturous for me to read if someone had let me put on my fujoshi lenses. It would've triggered me so much less if I could say to myself "it's okay because there's yaoi in 15 pages." I was very pleased when it was implied Nath and Jack got together by the end of the book... They were so doomed throughout the book and it made me sad. They got undoomed by the end though! So it's okay.
Overall, I still don't think I like this book. Jack and Nath was the only part I actually enjoyed about it. I think James should die. Plain and simple as that. Marilyn is insufferable as a mom and also at fault but it was partly James' fault for existing... Maybe she would've been happier if she found community in other gender-nonconforming women instead! I feel bad for the kids and hope they're all happier. That's all, I think...