The premise is exciting and unusual, however the promise is never fulfilled. The Visitation for which the book is named is incidental in the book and goes nowhere. Characters come in and out of the protagonists' lives with no rhyme or reason and do not affect any change in the characters (in particular, the Virgin Mary has no immediate or apparent affect on the two main characters's lives). They serve no purpose. Characters who could be interesting are left behind with no further storyline. The story takes many directions only to not develop any and instead go on yet another direction. This could have been a coming of age story, it could have been comic, it could have been compelling, unfortunately, it is none of those things.