Animal justice
The novel shows a young woman coming home to find that her dubious fiancé has been killed, mutilated, and eaten by her dogs. This is dramatic irony, but it is actually situationally ironic as well; the dogs are willing to judge the man for his worth in a way that she never wants to. They symbolize her instinctual resistance to her fiancé, and indeed, when she researches his family in Quebec, she learns that he lied about everything. He was a sociopath.
Missing the sociopath
Morgan is trained to be a sociopath-spotter. She studies Criminal Justice with an emphasis on psychology, so in her classes, she is required to study what a criminal thinks and feels, and she is also studying the effects of criminal mentalities on the minds of their victims. But then, when she becomes the victim of a sociopath, she completely misses it. This primary irony speaks to the difficulty of using knowledge in one's own life. Her desire for love overwhelmed her rational faculties.
Therapy's actual effect
The novel shows an irony in the therapeutic process. Rather that showing her journey of therapy as a pathway toward an objective, she attains the reward simply by making the decision to go. The therapy visits are physical evidence to herself that she is willing to take time for herself, to care for her needs, and to prioritize health and balance. The benefits of their conversations are shown to be secondary to the primary benefits of just carving that space out in her week.
Self care versus other care
Morgan fosters dogs, which is very difficult for her. She has to walk up and down 68 steps to her apartment, but she does that with the dogs every day because she has a giving, caring nature. She knows a good dog, so to speak, but why doesn't she feel that way about herself? The irony of self care is that although she is caring and giving by nature, it doesn't occur to her to give or care for herself. She must learn to be self-affirming through painful tragedies.
Thesis synchronicity
One irony in the book is something that Grad students talk about; when writing a thesis, sometimes fate will come alongside a person, it seems, and make their life synchronous with their research so that they aren't just studying or writing a thesis—they're actually embodying it. The synchronicity of Morgan's life and thesis comes when her path crosses with a sociopath, but her victim mentality makes her unwilling to admit the red flags. This is exactly the subject of her thesis, and she must learn firsthand. Maybe that will help her with her job one day, because she will empathize with people like herself.
