The unmerciful sword of reality that ravaged these families ended both marriages. Some few years later we find that Mallory, in her desperation to quell the pain and betrayal that she felt, had followed a path eerily similar to that of Katherine. In the following years, Chadwick had lived a joyless life, blaming himself for his daughter's death. He tried to make some kind of amends by working at a boot camp for troubled teens. Finally, when Ann could no longer stand to see Mallory destroy herself, she called Chadwick to enroll her daughter in his camp. Slowly, with tentative and painful steps, we see Mallory slowly edge back from the cliff's edge on which she had been living. Beneath all of this we learn more about what fueled Chadwick, why he felt such deep responsibility for Mallory, and how Mallory's life held such important elements to get him past his own Katherine's death.
After getting to appreciate Riordan's style in his Tres Navarre series, this outing went in a very different direction and had a very different style. In fact, if I had not known who the author was, I would not have been able to make a guess. This was not what I would term a light-hearted story. It's dark elements weighed on me because my own daughter is the same age as Katherine. As with most children, they have two aspects to their lives. One is the face that they show to you, and the other is how they are when they are on their own. Often those are quite different and we must find a way to teach and guide without a heavy hand, but in a manner such that we are heard. It also made me consider the lengths that I would go to toward protecting my own daughter.
