I didn't realize that was Yuri's father. I'm guessing I should have... all those Russian three-fold names confuse me. Incidentally, while we're on the topic of names, is there any reason you can think of to write "Yura" instead of Yuri? My Dutch translation has "Joera" instead of the expected "Joeri" (the Dutch ortography as opposed to the English one isn't the point here, obviously, the final vowel is).

What I mean about the inexplicable jumps is for instance in the first scene that we get with Nika and Nadia. I don't have the book with me now to quote precisely, but it starts out with Nika hiding under his bed, then going outside, and thinking about Nadia. Then all of a sudden, one moment he's alone, next sentence he and Nadia are sitting in a boat, and the story goes from there. How he got to that boat, where Nadia came from... who can say.

Then a few pages further you get something similar with Lara lying on her bed one moment and the next moment being in the middle of a flashback to her mother's boyfriend making moves on her, but that one is far less confusing because it's obvious that it's a flashback.