"I'm not sad," she said, crying.

This book seemed to plague 'Holiday Reads' stands in bookshops a couple of years ago, implying it is an easy read, which in many ways it is, it is not in an way an easy read to swallow. There is no sugarcoating in this narrative, there is no romanticising of heavy and sensitive subjects for the sake of being poetic, there is no space to breathe in this book; I am grateful to Sadie Jones for all of these things because one moment I was confined by her words, with no room to think and in the next, as pretentious and sappy as it sounds (cut me some slack, I just finished uni, I'm probably going to get a little sensational), my mind felt liberated.

Every page seems to be soaked through with the sense of isolation and exclusion; as a reader it is clear that all the characters are trapped in some way or another, but while I was wrapped up in this knowledge, I failed to notice myself become trapped in the narrative and mindsets that no "normal" person should be familiar with until it was too late and all I could do was read.

As well as weaving this clever and imprisoning web, Jones also effectively depicted the hypocrisy of previous generations' (and our own) obsession with keeping up appearances at all cost that are kept safe by the dividing practice of defining ourselves by what we are not. Lewis bore the brunt of being the Other, the Outsider, the Outcast, made him believe that he was wrong and alone in this, when in truth all the characters had wrongness in them, that the line between right and wrong is blurred and no one is 100% anything but human. If you can recognise this happening to a character, we should start recognising it happening to ourselves.

We are all trapped; we allow ourselves to be controlled by "the norm" and position ourselves on one side of the line or the other, reluctant to change in case it disrupts the familiar that keeps us safe. We are this or that. From there we are right or wrong, and of course from these dividing practices come social issues that shamefully still exist. But we can be this and that. We are both because we are human and to continue denying this will keep us frozen and unchanging, like the people of Waterford.

This will probably sound patronising, but I tell you now that is not what I intend: for those who saw some of the characters nonsensical or thought the lack of relief was unrealistic, I am happy for you. I understand it is not original in its messages, but I have not read a book that was so powerfully and honestly written. Yes, this book was bleak, suffocating and depressing but it was also bright and hopeful. Like I said at the end of my opening paragraph, as Jones's claustrophobic narrative started to ebb away, it was like breathing in fresh air.