This book depressed me, and for what? I will say that Jessamine Chan is a strong writer and I enjoyed the writing on a sentence level. But how many times can we touch on the point that no matter how hard Frida tries, she's never good enough? Reading about her striving and striving and suffering and being punished anyway mostly just made me feel awful and every incident drove home the exact same point: mothers are expected to be perfect. Like, I get it. This could have been a short story or a novella and it might have packed the same punch without making me feel like I too just spent a year in what was functionally prison. I don't know. This just left a sour taste in my mouth and I kind of wish I hadn't read it.