I was disturbed with the story, seeing as the author was 16 when she wrote the book. The story was vulgar and certainly not typical of anybody's teenage years. As I read the story I wondered if Ray was crying for help from her own internal torment. I also was unimpressed by the direction of the story. It seemed more like several pages from a troubled girl's journal than a published story with a message, lesson, or depiction of something one could learn from. There were no hints of the depth of the characters in her family, in which to point to the dysfunction of the whole family system. Through the book Ray defends the father character and offers no glimpse into his private hell. The mother and brother are barely explored; the author herself never offers much more of her own character than the few tidbits of emotion coupled with pain, rape, or abuse.