Marley is the novel’s 14-year-old protagonist. Her world shatters when she learns that her parents adopted her after her biological mother died and her father left. Upon learning this, Marley questions her entire identity and worldview. She has always felt exceptionally close to her family, but now, she feels anger and bitterness and no longer trusts the people she loves the most.

Marley undergoes an intense internal transformation as she struggles to come to terms with the truth about her family. Alongside the relationship issues that she has with her adoptive family, she struggles to redefine her own identity as well. She even feels ashamed after learning the truth, as if she is not the person she always believed herself to be because of her status as an adopted person. She looks back at her past self as naïve and cocky, someone who thought she “knew it all” because she had formulated an identity built on a lie.

To cope, Marley clings to familiar things that ground her in her identity, such as her name. As she admits, “I love the sound of my name now. Want to hold onto it and hear people say it over and over again […]It holds me somewhere I used to be.