Saving Noah

i'm so confused on the purpose of this book, the reaction to this book, and what exactly i am supposed to be getting out of this. i kept waiting for the moment when it would click for the mother, for her to have this epiphany that even though she loved her son she couldn't condone or excuse what he'd done but still....all the way to the end she made excuses for him even going so far as to essentially say what happened to those little girls wasn't comparable to what noah suffered in response to his crimes because “there was no penetration.” i feel like i'm going crazy like people actually like this book? and felt moved by it? it was somehow more frustrating to be in the head of this mother than in the head of her underage pedophile son. i'm going to assume that anyone rating this highly has never dealt with this subject matter in real life, and i'm thankful for that, but as someone who has...i don't feel sympathy for a pedophile, regardless of age. an underage pedophile is still a pedophile, being molested as a child by another child still has the same ramifications of a child being molested by an adult i can promise you that. all of this on top of the fact that this book is just badly written. and the “twist” at the end really cemented my hate for this book tbfh. that final pov before the epilogue emphasises how this is clearly just a bait book, a book meant to shock and gasp and appall and that is it. i have to stop getting recommendations from tiktok