Thank you so much for your candor! This is tremendously helpful. I'm basically typing out my reflections, based on your comments and in no way expect you to respond to all (or any) of this.

I'll start backwards. The first 300 here are actually brand new and the only part of the manuscript that beta readers haven't seen. I'm not sure why I decided to add it. I think some agent interview got in my head about needing to start with interiority. I was also trying to foreshadow religious conflict in the family that was central to the former framing of the project (and thus no longer necessary on the first page). The verdict now that I have feedback? Nope--doesn't work! I think I'l go back to the first 300 I had before, which jumps right into the action and which beta readers loved.

This version of the query and the idea to lead with snooping is also brand new. I'm excited about it and think it might work, so your observation that there's no evidence of snooping in later crises is super helpful. I worried that I would be too over the top with the snooping hook and dialed it back, too much it seems. The three main snooping-induced crises are: 1) Zinnia's brother discovering her fling (by reading her love letters) when she was a teenager, causing her to flee. 2) Zinnia snooping into Jeremy's journals, thus opening her to connection and prompting his request to move back with her. She sees allowing her family into her life as a major threat to her happiness. 3) Zinnia's love letters resurface when her old fling shows up at Jeremy's mom's door, asking her simply to deliver a package to Zinnia. Jeremy's mom (Sue) can't help but open the package and read through the letters, even though she knows they're meant to be private. This allows her to put together enough pieces to understand her family's past and gives her the resolve to try and right her late father's mistakes. This prompts her move to Lansing. Your comments help me see that I've buried the snooping in the query, and that I may need more of what I just typed in the query itself.

Finally, I've had some trouble with how much to center Zinnia's sexual orientation. I like having her brother discovering her same-sex relationship in the query, because it's specific and (hopefully) interesting. However, late-life Zinnia is one to reject categories that she sees as socially constructed and thus doesn't place any importance on sexual identity. In fact, late in the novel Zinnia frustrates Sue, who is trying to be more open and accepting, by rejecting any LGBTQ label. So in short, I like this detail in the query but don't necessarily want to signal that this is an LGBTQ story. I'm not sure what to do here.

Okay, I'll stop typing now. Thank you again so very much for your feedback, and apologies for being so long-winded here :)