Point of View

The novel is written in first-person from the limited perspective of Mary Addison. Mary is a teenager by this point, but the novel covers events that happened to Mary from more than six years earlier. The reader is present for interactions between Mary and other characters, including girls who live in the same group home, her boyfriend who does community service hours at a local nursing home with Mary, and the officials who deal with her on a regular basis. These interactions provide important information about Mary and about her situation, but many of these are unreliable and misleading, mainly because these characters either think the worst or the best of Mary and are not good judges of her character. For example, several of the girls at the group home are evil characters who are often fighting with Mary. These interactions seem biased, and Mary...