A story about Iris, a young woman who’s struggling to come to terms with her mum’s death – it happened seven years ago, but she’s only just learning the truth about what really happened. Seeing her mother in a whole new light is challenging, and she wonders if she’s going to make the same mistakes.

The blurb is a bit misleading – Órla is a fairly minor character, compared to Iris’s family and her best friend Tala. That’s not a bad thing, and the story of Iris’s relationship with her mother went to interesting and unexpected places, just not the fluffy wlw romance I was expecting.

It took a while for me to warm up to the book, partly because it wasn’t what I was expecting, partly because I think it gets stronger as it goes along. Tala has some lovely poetry that doesn’t appear until halfway through (including completely unexpected ace rep, yay), and some of the stuff about constellations and love in the final few chapters is gorgeous.

I’m glad I picked it up, even if it’s not what I was expecting.

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