When I was older Book

Um.. this book wasn't my favorite. I honestly couldn't crack the code of the story and wasn't able to understand the message or theme that this book was trying to present.
I understand that the was the author's debut novel, and you could tell. The author didn't do a very good job of conveying her thoughts throughout the story and I was confused by some of the statements in this book.
The author tried to make a deep emotion statement in this book and I think that she failed overall in this department. One of the concepts that the main character of this book presents is: time. The author explores the meaning of time and what it means in terms of events and measurements. I didn't get what the author was trying to present, as far as this message goes. In my opinion I think that the author tried to go too deep with the story, and as a result she lost me.
However, there were some things about the story that I did find interesting. I loved the main character and everything that she stood for; I was able to draw a lot of parallels between her and myself. I also was fascinated by the confused and absent father of the main character. I enjoyed his confusion and how he handled his emotions, I thought it brought up a good point. The relationship element in this book was interesting. I found the dynamic, situation and construct to be interesting. I also liked and appreciated how realistic and slow the relationship was taken in comparison to other relationships in YA literature. I also thought that the was that the author drew differences between the two sisters in this book helped bring out the reality of Sophie's, the main character in this book, relationship.
An then there is the death and leukemia element of the story. It didn't play an as big role in the story as I thought it was but you cold somewhat sense the presence of the story line throughout the entirety of the story.
Overall I thought this book was a blend of good and bad elements, but still interesting enough to keep my attention throughout. Although I couldn't decipher te overall meaning of this story I found some of the sub plots, which were quite plentiful, to be very entertaining.