I wanted to like this book. I loved the idea of Josie. She is the ice princess, the smart girl who works hard and gets herself out of a tough home situation (as a child of addicts who herself struggles with addiction and strives to walk the line between understanding and rejecting family I can empathize here when I normally won't). There were some great passages:
"I'm afraid that I don't have enough to give, that I can't love a baby the way it needs to be loved. Sometimes I'm not even sure I have enough to give Daniel."
"He was good in bed; he had the kind of authority that you sometimes find in men who don't think too much."
"There's this hollow place in me--this place that needs to be alone, this place that vibrates and can't sit still....I've been like this for as long as I can remember. Sure that it's never going to work out. Sure that it's all my fault...that's standard issue for someone who grew up like I did--classic adult-child-of-an-alcoholic stuff..But so what? Given that, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I have to go on from where I am."
"I had a few friends but no one that I felt I could tell the truth of my life to."
"you had to let go, how you couldn't control the circumstances of your life, every now and then he still hoped that just staying away from that bottle would fix everything. That staying sober would be enough."
But then, the whole love affair with Ben was way too 6th grade for me: he puts on the Prince song that few people know and they make eyes across the room and she says "yeah" and it just read like a bad romance novel. And Southgate doesn't appear to understand the actual work life of a research scientist. People with PhDs who work in the field do not have "lunch breaks" per say from which they have to return at a certain time (despite Josie and Ben having "a little while before we have to get back" from their lunch).
As a book on addiction there were some good nuggets and I think Southgate makes an interesting point about how Josie (despite being the one who has it all together and is not on the surface an addict) is dependent on her own self reliance to a point that it is actually damaging her ability to live a healthy life. However, it was too simplistic and not believable in the daily life. Overall it was a good quick read, but nothing special.