I just finished JoJo Moyes‘s latest, We All Live Here, published just under a year ago. In looking at the list of her books that I have read, most have received four or five stars from me; but there’s always one…and this seems to be it.

I thought, after reading the blurb, that I would relate to this protagonist. After all, both of us were left by our husbands, ostensibly to take a time out to consider the relationship but in actuality to hook up with someone younger and more fit. I didn’t have the burden of raising two children (we didn’t have any), and neither of my parents moved in with me (although my mother did insist that I should move home, back into my childhood room, after my seven-year marriage was over!), but still…empathy, right? (BTW, I did not move back in with my parents!)

Unfortunately, this book reads more like those ubiquitous “AITA” (Am I the A$$hole?) videos on Facebook, where someone tells a story in which someone behaves badly and then wants validation about whether or not they are the, er, bad guy. In the context of the book, I decided, fairly early in the story, that Lila the protagonist was the a$$hole, despite the fact that yes, she had a lot to endure: A philandering husband who left her to raise her two daughters while he started a new family with a new model; a stepfather who was recently widowed (Lila’s mother died) and seemed to have moved in with Lila and her daughters without invitation; and an absent father she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager, who showed up on the doorstep expecting to inhabit the spare room and weasel his way into the hearts of his granddaughters.

It would seem to be easy to have sympathy, at least, for someone so beleaguered, and yet Lila makes it so difficult. She is self-centered, self-pitying, and whiny, and she dwells inside her own story with total disregard for those around her for a good part of the book. The final self-realization epiphany comes so late that I just didn’t care. Also, there was one incidental detail in the story that drove me mad until it was solved, and there was no resolution until the last 40 pages of the book.

Even though I have enjoyed some of her books much more than others, I never thought I’d read one and simply say “Don’t bother.” Who knows—maybe your reaction to Lila etc. will be materially different from mine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.