The initial premise, and the first third of this book, was great ... and then ... it wasn't. It took a left turn into magical realism, and, well, my suspension of disbelief and ability to suffer absurdly dramatic characters just couldn't survived. I finished it (I was listening to the audio version), but it was a hate listen by the end. "Big twists" were obvious, character logic was frustrating at best, even for magical realism the mechanics of the core principle was ... tough to make excuses for. And the denouement? The author might have well just ended it with "and they all lived happily ever after".

There seem to be people out there who liked this book, but I can definitely put it on my "do not recommend" list.