wow, really appreciate all your detailed thoughts about this book! i can't be quite as generous w/ my time today, but I did want to chime in re: sadie.

you asked "...why was sadie completely blameless?..." for me, it's because she was basically a child when dov seduced her! she was sort of manipulated into that relationship by someone w/ significantly more power than her, which for me makes it hard to want to shift blame onto her for mistakes she's making w/r/t dov.

that said, i'm with you overall. it's a good, not great, book. but I did think one of its strengths was that the characters are somewhat realistic in terms of their messiness; as a reader (or at least as this reader), it's easier to identify w/ characters that are trying their best, but are still making bad choices sometimes