The premise of this book is incredibly intriguing. A mother loses her son to a drunk driver and executes her own retaliation when the justice system fails her. After spending nine years in prison, she struggles to rebuild her broken relationship with the son she left behind. There are many plot twists in the story, even leading back to a story of unrequited love between a WWII widow and an artist in the 1940s. Each of the stories within this story were fascinating by themselves and would have made a wonderful novel on their own. Unfortunately because there was so much packed into one novel, the reader's desire to learn about these characters is not satisfied. By far, the most interesting character in the story is not the main character, but rather the Woman In Red herself, the grandmother of the main character who is torn between the desire to do what is right for her family and her own love of an unattainable man. And because of the many, many layers of plot, the story almost becomes unbelievable. How could so much drama really occur on one tiny Puget Sound Island? There comes a point in the book where the reader starts to feel as though they are reading a recap of a soap opera rather than a contemporary piece of fiction. I half expected aliens to abduct Alice before the story was out. It would have made almost as much sense as some of the other catastrophes that occured. I will say, the ending could not have been better. The author did a wonderful job of appropriately bringing in a surprise character within the last two pages of the novel that really lets the reader know that our two main characters will be able to tie up all their loose ends and everything is going to be okay. There are absolutely some redeeming qualities to the novel. But with the outlandish plot twists, the excessive layering of storylines within the story, and the multitude of typos within the book, I would have a hard time recommending this book to other book clubs.

There were several plots within this intriguing book. I was distracted by the many typos not caught by the editor, however, and was disappointed overall with the reading experience.