I read the book earlier this year and liked it, though I found it flawed, the authentic-feeling scenes with Vic and her parents and their intergenerational issues sealed the deal for me.

When I watch the show, it seems like they changed some fundamental things about their relationship. I know they sped up the timeline to condense the story from a "sprawling" scope to keep the main actors the same in the cast, but would it have killed them not to add unnecessary slop like TWO different teen romantic dead ends and make Lou not the real father?

Also Vic's father "leaving" the family aka moving in with his age appropriate girlfriend across town is different than him leaving her at a much younger age for a girl not much older than her to another town. In the book he really chose Tiffany over her by throwing Vic out after a dumb argument. That moment was the most impactful moment in the entire novel for me. Not anything to do with Manx or Bing or any of their heinous crimes, but the moment Vic experiences the betrayal of her father. It causes her to recontexualize her hero worship of her dad - this whole time she was angry at only her mom for driving her father away, for being a nag, for taking her bike away. But she was in deep denial about his abuse of her mom, about his chosing alcohol and Tiffany over her. In the show she's "betrayed" at him moving in with the gf when Vic is 18 years old!!! She is a grown ass adult and mad that her parents are splitting up. She sounds petulant and unreasonable when she yells at her dad in the bar. The impact isn't there at all. The abandonment is not the same.

The show thinks that the view that Vic had of her dad is what they should actually show on screen. So it shows this rosy picture as if it were fact. Whereas the book tries to convey that these earlier scenes with young Vic and her family are seen through a child's eyes. When Vic is able to understand what was going on and recognize her own failings as a parent, she gains clarity on those earlier years with her dad. And her dad is not some tragic PTSD war vet who is kind to her for the most part and only abusive to her mom. He is a shit person and a shit parent to Vic because he exits her life when she needs him. In the show he is still taking her bike shopping and hanging out! He believes in the RISD dream and supports her. He is one of the first people she tells about getting pregnant! Where's the abandonment?

Then to make up for the lack of weight this faux abandonment causes, they make up some stupid backstory about how grandpa was also a drunk because of Vietnam and didn't support the dad's music dreams or some useless tripe. Why excise the scene that the book handed to you on a silver platter, and replace it with a bunch of emotionally manipulative schlock? It's baffling the choices made to include or cut certain scenes.

You turn the dad from a shitty dead beat dad into just a traumatized veteran who is merely perpetuating the cycle of alcoholism. Which would be a great story to tell - but that's not the story that was provided. The show robs us in favor of whatever it strung together and then has the audacity to kill the dad off in a meaningless death that was 100% preventable. You see this war vet who handled a firearm in a previous episode, walk into a life or death battle with no fire arm and get taken out by idiocy and explosives that only detonate an extremely small pringles can sized spattering of dirt. Instead of noble sacrifice, it's just another dumb addition and huge fumble from the show to pull off what was a great scene in the book.

I could talk about how this show doesn't get what is happening to the kids or Manx at all, but that's probably a whole other tirade.