The ingredients for this book are 1 love triangle; multiple inversions of said triangle, as people hook up and machinate against each other; and the addition of two children, which always screws up the careful calculus of adults. Shake well.

When I finished reading this book, I thought to myself "This plot is so relationally convoluted that most likely a woman wrote it." On the flipside, I could also think "That a woman is expected more than a man to write something so complex yet coherent could be a strike for gender equality."

One of the main characters, Amelia, has her own dilemma, albeit it is regarding her choice of ethics. No matter how much she claims to fight for everyone, when it comes down to choosing between them and her child, the choice is obvious. For her almost-husband, who sees all dying children in the world like his own, the choice is not so simple. At least he wasn't a hypocrite about it.

Here, the name-dropping of famous brands, along with the jargon of medicine, are secondary to the trials of the characters. As much as I like technobabble, I recognize that this is ultimately a book about people, and Tucker framed that well.