Alan

At the very least indicate in the story what exactly the reader is supposed to learn as a result of all of the deaths. Outside of causing the protagonist to be sad, I don't see that any of the deaths did anything whatsoever to move this story forward. Honestly, the most meaningful piece of the story as it relates to the protagonist, and aided somewhat in my actually caring about what happened to the protagonist, occured when the protagonist and her mother reconciled (for lack of a better word) near the end.

No, just this author.

The narrator was fine.

It is not my story to edit.

I was very deliberate about this purchase. I am working on a story myself that, in part, involves time period changes with my characters from teens to adults. After reading the summary of this story I was interested in how the author would handle the back and forth transition between the time periods. The story itself seemed interesting enough and I know this particular author has sold millions of books, but when the tragedies and deaths of this story began piling up with seemingly no real purpose, other than to create sadness in the life of the protagonist, it was all I could do to actually finish the story. Any really good novel will create situations and circumstances that cause the reader to truly care about the characters and what happens to them. Unfortunately this story fails to get the job done.