- #1
Infuriating.The most infuriating are the truly evil side characters. And I do mean evil. They have zero qualms setting the FL on fire to keep themselves warm, when they had many, many non-harmful options to chose instead, and were actually quite hot and didn't need warming up at all, or turning ML into a lacky who s*aves away earning money for them in exchange for emotional scraps.FL and ML are two extremely effed up, very ab*sed people in need of significant therapy who wind up together and cannot communicate on even the simplest of things. And both refuse to ask. 75% of the problems not cause by the sociopathic side characters would disappear if they would just flipping ask, instead of skulking around, spying on each other and making assumptions. "Why are you so terrified of my parents?" "Are we actually flat broke?" "What do you do with all the presents I send you?" "Do you hate me?" Y'know, important stuff.The rest would be resolved by paying attention to each other while they spend time together, but the husband's particular traumas make him so exceedingly bad at reading people, and the wife's make her terrified of ever complaining, so it's like watching amputees trying to run a 5k without prosthetics.Switching bodies helps the oblivious lug of a husband FINALLY get some things, and gives the wife some much needed respite, but they both always seem to just miss the incidents that would explain everything.Spoiler
For example, he misses out on her getting locked in a closet by his parents and threatened by her brother.
Or he goes to a party as her but, rather than the normal party behavior of them actively mocking her, which they usually do, he only experiences no one talking to him/ his wife for an hour. He never socializes outside of business, so he doesn't know this is weird, and concludes she doesn't have friends, rather than she's being actively ostracized and bullied.
[collapse]You'll want to rip your hair out. And wrap the two in cotton wool and tell everyone else in the story to f*** off and die, and never speak to them again. But, read it if you like trainwrecks, and rubber neck when you pass traffic accidents. It's the same sort of enthralling.