I'm wondering if Juliet comes off as a bit of a Mary Sue simply because most of the book is written from her perspective? So of course we hear mostly good things about her as most of the letters are written BY her or about her.

As for the villagers who were so eager to get to know her, I saw it less because she was a perfect person everyone wanted to know, but more because she was an author who was going to write about them. I figure if that happened in real life, EVERYONE would be wanting to get on that person's good side, right? To create better exposure? I do think they genuinely like her at the end but unlike say, Twilight, where Bella was just LOVED simply because she was new, I saw more motivation behind the islanders wanting to get to know her and possibly be featured in her book.

Isola ended up growing on me sooo much. Dawsey I loved right off the bat - and am I the only one who didn't see their romance coming? Maybe I've been reading too many apocalyptic science fiction novels where the love interest is obvious right away so I didn't see it coming this time around