I read The Girls by Lori Lansens a couple of weeks ago, after my mother-in-law insisted I read it. She'd given me such a play-by-play of the highlights that I assumed I could just skim it, but it was actually well worth a read, despite more than one wall-banging moment.

1. I'd already heard so much about it you would have assumed it couldn't have kept my interest. Not so. For one thing, I don't think my m-in-law told me the girls were dying. That created a narrative drive forward that kept me reading.

2. The voice. The girls were supposed to be 29-30 in the book, but they usually sounded fifty. Why didn't this create a wall-banger for me? I was enjoying it so much I was excusing the voice. "Okay," I thought. "They are small town people, maybe they would sound older. They are around older people. They live a very old fashioned life." Actually, I don't think any of this was a great excuse or even entirely true, but I made excuses for the author!

3. Their jobs. I had more than one issue here, and I know disabled people work in libraries and can do shelving but I've been a shelver myself and I don't believe for a second that a person with the disabilities described could do it. However, I ignored this too, maybe because it wasn't too important to the plot.

What did keep me reading? I was fascinated by the way Aunt Lovey raised the girls, and the relationship between Aunt Lovey and her husband. I also really enjoyed the characterizations of the girls, and how they could know each other so well, and not so well, even joined as they were. The author truly created two separate individuals, and that is so impressive.

If your characters are interesting and compellling enough, your book can survive even with wall-banging moments!