At times, Cunningham's writing is lyrical, while Maeve is sassy, bright and sexy. At other points, though, the plot bogs down, and the arch style of Cunningham's writing begins to grate. Arguments between her foster mothers, she notes, "had a tendency to coincide with [their] collective PMS. PMS! I hear some of you protesting. But I thought they lived in harmony with nature. Sure they did. But who says nature is always nice?"
Such cute, self-referential asides only get in the way of the larger narrative sweep of the novel, and wake the reader from Cunningham's otherwise transfixing spell.