I’m still sitting here wondering what the heck I just read. It made a bit more sense once I read the author’s note. The note does warn you on the upcoming spoilers so I’ll tip toe around the “spoilers” as well to avoid ruining the critical twist in the book. 
    After reading the author’s note everything makes sense. To put it generally, the author started writing the book one way (which is what happens as you develop the book and very common in the writing process) and it wasn’t really working. (I agree) So they had another idea and wrote it another way.

Unfortunately, this is very evident in the book. The big twist is where you can tell the author changed her mind on the direction she wanted the book to go. There wasn’t enough reworkingdone to the first part of the story to really make the whole story make sense. 

The book feels very choppy and there are parts where I’m just not sure what the point of them were. For example, Dee.
     All that said, I still kinda enjoyed the book. It was interesting figuring out what the heck was going on. I felt myself wanting to pick up the story and continue reading.
    It was so dark. I felt gross afterward. I do wish I had more of a hint of what was going on when I first started reading so I could have cared/paid more attention in the first part of the book. The lack of intrigue in the first part of the book is what I mention above. Which makes sense if the author needed to do a rewrite when she decided to redirect the story. 
     The second part of the boom hit me in the stomach with all the dark, twisty turns and saved the story. I also think a book LIKE this is hard to tackle… so kudos to you, Ward.
     So if you want to feel very uncomfortable, this is the book for you. I’m going with 3 stars as there are too many critical ‘issues’ with the book… that said, I would still recommend.