I found the main character, Stella, to be very naive and unlikeable even before the traumatic incident. Her rationalizations (both before and after the incident) are absurd, and her obsessions with Max along with her need to impress him made her seem mentally ill from the start. I couldn't stand her and had a hard time caring what happened to her. Put her out of her misery already! Nothing in the book was surprising, but for the fact that the "young girl" that showed up at her house was an almost grown teenager that rivaled Stella in her level of "pathetic-ness." It's hard to believe this book was written by a psychologist.