I mean, this may be just me, but “early-to-mid-twentieth century mystery about train crime” doesn’t exaI’m pretty astounded by how much fun this was.
I mean, this may be just me, but “early-to-mid-twentieth century mystery about train crime” doesn’t exactly scream nonstop thrill ride. But here we are!
I’m also not sure why it took me so long to write this review (two months, to be exact, so actually not that long for me but still) but again, here we are.
I don’t actually really want to say much on this book, which is astounding in its own right because my number one hobby is making up various excuses for me to wax romantic on various subjects and generally listen to myself.
But! In this case, that would be bad. Because a lot of the rad-ness of this book is due to the twist, but the Last Thing I Ever Want To Do is spoil this twist for you. Maybe this book will not sound fun because of my saintly consideration of your twist enjoyment, but you should just tuck away in your head that it’s completely cool ok???
Let’s discuss the very limited number of things I won’t feel bad about disclosing.
For one thing, the way this is constructed is very fun?? It takes you through the thought process of Hercule Poirot (Extremely Cool Belgian Detective - capitalized due to its being his official, government-ordained title) as he analyzes the sitch. So it kind of feels like you’re a detective too, and if that’s not the dream I don’t know what is.
If you can look me in the eyes (but please don’t, I’d like to keep these relationships strictly internet-based thanks) and tell me you wouldn’t drop everything immediately in order to become a detective and/or international spy full time, you are not someone I’m interested in knowing thanks.
Agatha Christie’s writing style is also really sharp and clean (which I can detect but nevereverever apply to myself, apparently). That’s probably why her books aged so well. This one definitely did, at least.
I think some people were rubbed the wrong way (horrific expression my apologies) by the constant discussion of race/nationality as an inherent and generalized part of people’s individual psychology. That would’ve upset me, probably, if it weren’t applied to e v e r y b o d y. Like, if white people got the easy way out, one, what else would be new, and two, that would be the worst ever.
Instead, every point of origin mentioned (Africa, England, America, France) is given its own psychoanalytic significance. Which is honestly interesting to read about, if only from a historical standpoint.
Are you guys proud of me for how well I remembered this book after two months??? I am visibly prouder of myself for remembering three things about a novel I genuinely enjoyed than most scientists are after major breakthroughs.
Which is incredibly on-brand for me.
Bottom line: Quick fun historical well-written! I could’ve replaced this whole review with those adjectives and been much more convincing.
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THAT WAS AMAZING THAT WAS AMAZING THAT WAS AMAZING!
(I hope you read that in Aziz Ansari's voice. Reevaluate your life if otherwise.)
Recently, I started watching How to Get Away with Murder. Because I am totally untrendy and if by some trick of nature I am somehow participating in sRecently, I started watching How to Get Away with Murder. Because I am totally untrendy and if by some trick of nature I am somehow participating in something that people at large appreciate, I must do so four years too late in order to keep the world running and not break fundamental laws of world operation, probably.
It’s a very entertaining show! Twisty and turny. Very dark. I’ve gasped a few times. Viola Davis is a national treasure.
That show is a lot better than this book.
It, like this book, follows a group of young people and a murder, and mystery surrounding that murder. It, too, involves steamy romance and social media and endless drama.
But it’s just totally, full-on better at doing all of it. There’s no avoiding it.
That’s not to say that this book isn’t good! It is. Or at least it isn’t bad.
Here’s the thing. It’s the watered-down, YA version of How to Get Away with Murder. Some people prefer those versions! And that’s okay.
If you liked Warcross better than Ready Player One. If you’re more interested in Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale than Mindhunter or Making a Murderer. It’s fine if you are! They’re just two totally different things.
YA murder stuff is frothier. There are YA requisites it has to meet: budding romance; groups of friends; high school drama; usually some sort of impending-future college-slash-career-goals plotline.
It all depends if you want a side of fluff with your murder mystery.
I, personally, don’t. Give me darkness and thrills and creeps and gore. Do not give me baseball drama and romantic miscommunication and phones getting taken away, please. I’m not interested.
But as far as that goes, this book was pretty good at it. It, at the very least, incorporated the drama into the murder and the motive.
The ending was predictable, yes, and sort of messy really, and definitely not creepy or shocking or the things I really want, but it was unique and somewhat creative.
This whole shindig, actually, was much more unique and creative than I expected. I really didn’t not enjoy it, even though I’ve been so busy trying to lock down the “Most Pretentious Person Alive” award while writing this that I may not have had the time to convey that.
I think it’s that I just finished You by Caroline Kepnes. And that’s really just a much better book than this. Unfair standard, though.
Bottom line: If you want young adult sh*t in your thriller and not just thrills, this book is perfect for you. If you’re here for the thrills, there are way, way, way better choices....more
for those of you who are mercifully new here, here's what that means: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplmy becoming-a-genius project, part 9!
for those of you who are mercifully new here, here's what that means: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.
this is doubly helpful because this book has been LANGUISHING on my shelves for four years. and also because i love roald dahl's children's fiction and have been meaning to read his adult stuff.
DAY 1: MADAME ROSETTE this is reminding me that somehow in my childhood collection of Roald Dahl books, not only his memoir of his childhood, but his later military memoir was mixed in - so between reading about bookworms with low-grade superpowers and fantastical chocolate factories, i was also reading about pilots shooting down airplanes and killing people. very normal. this is also reminding me that i did enjoy that book. even if this is just a way worse version of it. rating: 3
DAY 2: MAN FROM THE SOUTH in order for this story to work, you have to be able to imagine that the majority of people value their own fingers less than a fancy rich person car. as someone who doesn't drive and doesn't appreciate cars, i can't tell whether this is absurd or whether i'm just better than everyone else. rating: 2.5
DAY 3: THE SOUND MACHINE very frightened of the idea that every time a flower is picked or a tree is chopped down or a vegetable is pulled it screams bloody murder. going to delete that thought from my brain straightaway. rating: 3
DAY 4: TASTE not sure if i'm entering a reading slump or am simply busy, but it's actually day 6, so either way...let's play catch up! this is a little predictable but also satisfying. sometimes even clichéd stories are fun if they're the best possible version of the cliché. rating: 3.5
DAY 5: DIP IN THE POOL this is a spooky one. roald dahl's brain contains multitudes. rating: 4
DAY 6: SKIN caught up! look at us go. the title of this one is a lil creepy so i am predisposed to be frightened. just the word skin? no other words? come on. upon finishing this: see above description of day 5. rating: 3.5
DAY 7: EDWARD THE CONQUEROR eek. i loved this one. rating: 4.5
DAY 8: LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER i read this in an eighth-grade specialized english class (it was called Young Playwrights and we had to write a play by the end of it - i think i wrote mine in 3 days and it was possibly one of the worst pieces of writing ever to be taken seriously by a teacher). it was extremely badass at the time and we were also all like roald dahl? mr willy wonka? he wrote this? the coolest thing to a group of fourteen year old nerds is a children's fiction writer also having a crazy crime murder situation happening on the side. anyway, it's even better than i remember it being. rating: 5
DAY 9: GALLOPING FOXLEY immediately i'm thinking about Fantastic Mr. Fox, simultaneously the most underrated Roald Dahl book and the most underrated Wes Anderson movie. think i'm due for a reread/rewatch combo. the other day i was talking with a friend about how working is way better remotely, and the only sad loss when it comes to office life is commuting. this made me feel that 10x harder. then i kept reading and promptly didn't feel that way anymore. rating: 3
DAY 10: THE WAY UP TO HEAVEN i have a huge soft spot for the name "idlewild," due to reasons i will not disclose in order to avoid doxxing myself. big girlboss energy on this one. rating: 4.5
DAY 11: PARSON'S PLEASURE so two stories ago there's a title with Fox in it and now there's one about a Mr. Boggis? you're killing me, Dahl. i got so overly invested in this one, i can't even explain to you. might f*ck around and move to rural new england and be the kind of person who eats scones and goes antiquing now that i've discovered this. rating: 4
DAY 12: THE LANDLADY in the grand tradition of this genius project, i forgot about this on a saturday and am now playing catch up on a sunday. a good old-fashioned creeper! rating: 3.5
DAY 13: WILLIAM AND MARY not for me, this one. rating: 2
DAY 14: MRS. BIXBY AND THE COLONEL'S COAT reading this story felt like when i found out that Midsommar is a gender-swapped retelling of Ari Aster's relationship problems. i'm always on team woman. rating: 2.5
DAY 15: ROYAL JELLY BEE BABY BEE BABY BEE BABY rating: 3
DAY 16: GEORGY PORGY immediately i am thinking what a plague to be named georgy porgy. i do not know if that is someone's name but the mere thought of something even tangentially similar...debilitating. there is something so creepy about adult men who are obsessed with their mothers. i don't even like thinking about it. anyway, as i read more and more of this book i'm finding it difficult to believe roald dahl wasn't something of a misogynist, which is a pretty huge bummer. rating: 2
DAY 17: GENESIS AND CATASTROPHE ya girl got vaccine round 1 today! i am tired and grumpy and my arm kinda hurts and i don't want to do this, but at the same time, in a much more real way, i'm addicted to posting so i'm in. this is the dumbest sh*t IMAGINABLE. it's about hitler's birth, and his parents are all praying for his survival and being like "pleaaaase god be merciful to him" but like...what is deep about that? genuinely? a whole lot of nothing. like, whoa, once upon a time, hitler was born. mind blown. a thought that could only come from the intrepid mind of roald dahl. like i said. i'm grumpy. but this would be laughable on a good day. "fraulein hitler your baby is born" give me a break rating: 1
DAY 18: PIG uh...this is a long one and i feel slumpy. sounds like a problem for future me. this actually isn't that long. it just fooled me by having chapters. (what kind of a short story has chapters??) anyway now i've sentenced myself to playing catch-up on a saturday, when usually i skip saturday altogether. my life is so hard. this one is just completely bizarre. not scary. not particularly well-written or interesting. just weird. rating: 2
DAY 19: THE VISITOR now, this one...this one is long. and it sucked. there is truly no more boring story than one about a sexist, racist white guy. rating: 1
DAY 20: CLAUD'S DOG this one is the longest of all AND is coming when i have the least enthusiasm for this project. almost impressive timing. this was just very boring and also kind of gross and depressing. it's also not one story, it's like 5, and the first few have nothing at all to do with the last couple. i call that Unnecessary. AND, to make matters worse, the last micro-short-story in this set is called The Champion of the World and it's literally a worse version of Danny, the Champion of the World. it's as if the collection itself set out to prove my opinion that roald dahl is just way better at children's fiction. UGH. i'm grumpy as hell. rating: 2
DAY 21: THE GREAT SWITCHEROO folks...we are so close to being done with this. the word "switcheroo" is fun and childlike and whimsical, so maybe this will be a good one. ... okay, immediately no. any protagonist with an internal monologue that refers to a woman as "my gorgeous and juicy little jewel" is no friend of mine. aaaand this whole thing is about sexual assault. rating: 1
DAY 22: THE BOY WHO TALKED WITH ANIMALS only three days after this one, y'all. mercy nears. i actually liked this one quite a bit. it was nice. rating: 4.5
DAY 23: THE HITCHHIKER who would have ever expected how badly this project would go? devastating stuff. also how do i go from having 7 successes in a row to 2 failures in a row??? the universe is no fan of mine. any story that feels like it could have been written for children, like this one, is a 10/10. but the trouble is roald dahl keeps feeling the need to flesh out these characters, and he does so by making them misogynistic racist creeps with nightmare brains. not so in this one, though! rating: 4
DAY 24: THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR well, roald, it's our penultimate day together! if time doesn't go by so fast...and by fast i mean achingly, unrelentingly slow. (on a sidenote, can you imagine looking another human being in the eyes and calling them "roald"? seems cruel and unusual.) i am extraordinarily excited for this one (and at this point in this project, mild enthusiasm would rank as extraordinary, but still) because another entry in my childhood collection of roald dahl books was entitled The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. are you impressed i remember even the number of stories? because i am. anyway, i recollect this as being a delight, and therefore i'm not even that mad that this "short story" is 52 pages long. great news: i still love this. rating: 5
DAY 25: THE BOOKSELLER everyone knows that i, like every reader, am ready to love every book about books, so i feel optimistic about this. also i'm bound to feel optimistic, because this project is DONE TODAY. or this installment of it. don't think you're getting off that easy. aaaaand nope. nope nope nope. rating: 1.5
OVERALL there are a few good ones in here - or okay more than a few - but overall roald dahl's fiction when it isn't for children is filled with creeps and grossos and sex criminals and racists and more often than not all of them combined. what a bummer. rating: 2.5...more
As far as Spooky Scary Suspense books go, this is a B-, but in terms of HGTV novelizations this is the best in the business.
(What’s that glowing on thAs far as Spooky Scary Suspense books go, this is a B-, but in terms of HGTV novelizations this is the best in the business.
(What’s that glowing on the horizon? Oh, it’s the pitchfork-toting angry mob ready to burn me at the stake for comparing this masterpiece of fiction to a television channel about what happens when you subject real estate agents to couples six months away from divorcing who seem unable to understand how money relates to the acquisition of residences.)
What I’m saying is: for me, this story is not particularly action-packed or exciting. What it does have is one of the best settings of all time. Also, gorgeous writing.
An acceptable compromise.
In case you have been living under a rock since August 1938, or have specifically been avoiding all mentions of literary classics and Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, I will provide a brief synopsis of this book.
Rebecca follows our nameless narrator, a poor girl who goes from being the lady-in-waiting (or something) to a very unpleasant woman to being the second wife of a rich man. (Same thing, am I right? Buh dum ch!) Said rich man is Maxim de Winter, who lives in the bestestest place in all England: Manderley.
Sounds like the jackpot, no? Except for the fact that good ol’ Max’s first wife, Rebecca, is (mysteriously) dead, and also according to everyone was wayyy better than our friend the narrator. Plus the creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, is obsessed with Rebecca.
DUN DUN DUN.
I won’t lie, Mrs. Danvers did creep me out a time or two. And while I found some minor plot points to be very predictable, some of the bigger ones still surprised me. So yes, the romance was totally meh for me, and yes, the story took me a while to get into (as in more than half the book), but it was far from a wash.
And that’s before you take into account how beautifully written and immersive and gorgeously described this is. Manderley really is like a character (view spoiler)[and I felt its loss like a death. Like, goodbye to all these basic ass characters, who cares, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BUILDING?! (hide spoiler)]. And I liked our little nameless narrator too. Even though she drove me crazy with secondhand embarrassment every other page.
Bottom line: This is legendary for a reason. (Pretend like my opinion on that matters. As if this isn’t already cemented among the great works of all time.)
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if you'll excuse me, i'll be laying down in a dark room for the next 4-6 business days.
review to come / 4 stars
----------------- currently-reading updates
i am ready to be SPOOKED. i am ready to be SHOCKED. i am ready to be DAZZLED by BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE...more
let's get into it. the title "Final Girls" is a reference to a group of 3 women who were the sole survivors of separate serial-killer massacres: Lisa, Samantha, and Quincy (our narrator). they're tabloid darlings each living separate lives (with varying degrees of normalcy) until one of them dies. ooOOH SPOOKY WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?!?!? (unfortunately, it's nothing anywhere near as exciting as what that glorious premise deserves.)
first compliments!!! hurray.
the good:
-the main character, quincy, runs a baking blog and it's really cute - you should know by now that sweets are a passion of mine so that's exciting
-neither of my 2 guesses for what The Big Reveal™ would be were exactly right (i really care about two things in a thriller: i want to have fun guessing the ending and i want my guesses to be wrong, and i want to be scared. or at least, you know, thrilled. and i guess it's good that this checked one of those boxes. the less important one, but still one of them.)
-a little bit of the last chunk was somewhat exciting. at times. (how enthusiastic does THAT sound?)
-as mentioned, the concept itself was very good (but GOD why couldn't the book live up to it)
the bad:
-nothing happens for the first 3/4 of the book. SERIOUSLY NOTHING. starting yesterday i just had to hunker down and read this in 100 page chunks. it never!! grabbed me!! and like it's a thriller so i'd like to be grabbed. (...you know what i mean)
-like i was literally checking Goodreads and Snapchat and my email and whatnot every five seconds. just bored af.
-the first 75% was also So Repetitive. i really wanna avoid spoilers, so i'll just say that the book implies two potential Big Reveals™ over. and over. and over.
-even the interactions feel repetitive
-Sam and Quincy's conversations and banter are always the saaaaaame. Jeff and Quincy have identical "r u ok" convos 3298472389 times.
-we hear the same spiel about Quincy's mom easily 8 times. if i have to read the phrase "Xanax and grape soda" one more time i'll be sent spiraling into a war flashback so intense i'll forget what reality is.
-most of the characters are BANANAS FLAT. Sam and Coop and Jeff, for sure. i have no real concept of Lisa. and it's IMPOSSIBLE to get a grip on who the hell Quincy is.
-when things start to come together (FINALLY) in the last third, it's, well...it's not great. here are some adjectives i would use to describe it: choppy, confusing, nonsensical, poorly explained, half-baked, characterizationally ill-fitting
-the climax of the book happens at about page 320 out of 345 and is over in 10 pages, SO THAT'S NOT EXACTLY A PAYOFF WORTHY OF THE 800 TIMES I READ ABOUT QUINCY LOOKING AT THE DOOR TO THE GUEST ROOM
-the last five pages really don't make sense or offer closure or fit with whatever scraps of concrete characterization Quincy had
wow. i really didn't think i had that much of a rant in me. but sweet lord i am so disappointed in this book.
I THOUGHT YOU WOULD BE GREAT.
bottom line: how much thrill could this "thriller" thrill if a thriller actually thrilled?
also........thanks much to Penguin First to Read for the ARC! i love that program....more
NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HATE, DISOWN, OR OTHERWISE PUNISH ME BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A RANT REVIEW!!!!!!!
I'm giving it three stars oTHIS IS NOT A ROAST!!!!!!
NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HATE, DISOWN, OR OTHERWISE PUNISH ME BECAUSE THIS IS NOT A RANT REVIEW!!!!!!!
I'm giving it three stars okay???? So don't be mad. That's not even a bad rating.
That being said: - this book was sososososo confusing, for, like, the first 15%, after which it was overwhelmingly obvious but took 300 pages to get to the revelations that had been pret-ty clear in a long term way - STUPID UNNECESSARY ROMANCE THAT I HATE. SO MUCH. BLEH BLEH. Why do people ship this so hard???
However there were moments of very pretty writing, and ya gotta admire the badassery of these characters folks.
But this book and I just didn't click.
Bottom line: I AM SO SORRY I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO HATE ME PLEASE
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IF I DON'T LIKE THIS BOOK I WILL BE DISOWNED BY EVERYONE I LOVE.
also i've read the first 10% of this four times. excited to go in for attempt #5
WOW, I LOVE WHEN BOOKS COPY REAL LIFE. Especially when it's totally uncredited! The murder case in this book just is the Amanda Knox case. Here are alWOW, I LOVE WHEN BOOKS COPY REAL LIFE. Especially when it's totally uncredited! The murder case in this book just is the Amanda Knox case. Here are all the similarities I noted (some spoilers of case specifics but basically just details of what the synopsis already reveals):
- white, pretty, Western female students living together in a foreign vacation spot
- one roommate/friend is murdered (Meredith, I think, in Amanda’s case, and Elise in the book)
- the other roommate/friend is the prime suspect (Amanda versus our narrator, Anna - even the names are close!)
- the boyfriend of the suspect is also investigated
- the case becomes a total media circus
- the crime is sexualized by the media (both cases attempt to reveal a nonexistent sexual attraction the suspect felt toward the victim)
- photos are used as evidence (in particular, photos of the suspect and her boyfriend laughing and kissing hours after the discovery of the body, and photos that make the suspect look murderous and dark)
- there are bloodstains in the bathroom the suspect claims not to have noticed initially
- the suspect becomes, well, suspected due to shock making her behave as if nothing happened - which makes the media go crazy
- the media repeatedly dubs the suspect “cold-blooded killer”
- the media and the prosecution refer to the suspect as a sociopath with little or untrustworthy proof
- the prosecution in the foreign country is under international pressure to find the killer
- thus, the prosecution attempts to depict the suspect as prone to violent outbursts and spells of intense anger
- they also ignore other suspicious figures/potential suspects, including a man from the area who was harassing the victim, connected to recent burglaries, and soon fled the country
- the murder weapon was a knife from the kitchen with the suspect’s fingerprints on it
- both victims were found dead of multiple stab wounds in pools of their own blood, with their clothes removed or tampered with (which leads to the sexualization of the case)
- both suspects used the following alibi: spent time with their boyfriends, then showered
- the evidence is largely circumstantial
- there is no concrete timeline offered by the prosecution
- personal writing of the suspect is published/used as evidence (Amanda’s diary; a poem and short story of Anna’s)
- the suspect spends months in a foreign prison
- the suspect makes a highly publicized, tearful apology to the family of the victim for their loss
- the suspect pleads not guilty
- THERE’S EVEN A F*CKING NANCY GRACE
On top of that plagiarism from reality, this was boring and slow, and I hated the characters, and the ~big reveal~ made no sense, probably because it was smushed into a handful of pages after reading hundreds.
Bottom line: Don’t bother. Watch the Amanda Knox documentary on Netflix instead. Isn't real life fun???...more
I do not, as I have said many a time, feel things very often. I am just shy of being a sociopathic monster, mainly because I consider myself to be wayI do not, as I have said many a time, feel things very often. I am just shy of being a sociopathic monster, mainly because I consider myself to be way too cute and charming for that. (Except sociopaths are capable of charm...huh. Back to the drawing board.)
Anyway. Even in my actual, real life, I try to experience emotions as infrequently as possible. This is only truer for the books I read.
In Cold Blood is a true crime narrative detailing the crime, investigation, and trial related to the murder of four members of the Clutter family, and therefore I wasn’t planning on feeling anything if at all possible. Because, duh, emotions related to that aren’t exactly going to be the equivalent of “eating cotton candy while at the top of a Ferris wheel at a fair in the beginning of summer” or “hearing an infant laugh for the first time.”
And yet, by page 50, Truman Capote had me feeling overwhelmingly fond of the Clutter family.
I knew what was going to happen to them. Even if I hadn’t known the book’s synopsis going in, I would have felt the building tension.
Somehow, though, even though I knew what was coming, I was really hoping the Clutters would be okay.
Mr. Clutter, the tenet of his community. Mrs. Clutter, who finally felt she might be overcoming her lifelong struggle with mental health. Nancy, the sweet, kind teenager who overbooked herself because she didn’t want to say no to anybody. Kenyon, nerdier than his older sister, but smart and kind and passionate.
As I read about their lives on and before November 15, 1959, I hoped they would be okay. Even as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock entered their home late at night, I hoped they would somehow leave a survivor.
What I expected out of this book was an exciting, impressive rendering of a horrible crime. I got a lot more. I was made to care about these people, and to feel their loss. I empathized with their loved ones, their community, their police force. I could have read about the Clutters for much longer than I did.
Unfortunately, the Clutters and the crime itself only took up about a third of the book. The remaining two thirds followed the investigation and the trial, but more than that, it followed the killers.
I felt no pity for Dick Hickock. I don’t think I was supposed to, or I hope I wasn’t. Because that guy was a piece of total sh*t. I’m someone who believes that people can be partially exonerated by their circumstances, but Dick Hickock had no circumstance that could make up for what a f*cker he was.
Perry Smith, on the other hand. Even for him, who suffered all his life, I was only able to feel partial pity. A sickening kind of pity - it nauseated me to read about him.
Maybe if this book felt more focused on the Clutters, I would have given it five stars. I don’t know. It’s still a four star read because it’s so impressive. It’s no wonder that this book to some extent birthed the genre of true crime as it is today. The exhaustive research and attention to detail is pretty much astonishing, and the writing is for the most part beautiful.
But the later parts of the narrative were sickening, and hard and unpleasant to read. Not just for their content, but for the treatment of the people it followed. I don’t know. It felt like it strayed a lot from the Clutters. Maybe it wasn’t ever supposed to be their story - maybe it was Perry and Dick’s all along. But I’d prefer to think it wasn’t.
Bottom line: I love true crime. I love classics. This feels outside of both of those genres. Genre-defying. I don’t even know what it is. It’s good. Hopefully that’s enough.
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i am so glad that i'm sticking to my plan of reading a classic a month. (i'm so proud of myself you'd never guess it's THE SECOND MONTH OF THE YEAR.)
i always forget how much i love classics until i pick them up??? they're classic for a reason.
whatever. i digress. this is a great book and i'll review it at some point hurray...more
I have this really terrible habit of requesting ARCs without really looking into them. And this book was no exception. All I knew was that this was, essentially, a nonfiction thriller about a marriage. And that’s not totally what I got, but damn if it wasn’t close. HOW FUN IS THAT?!
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So we follow the author, Jen, in chapters that alternate “Before” and “After.” The event that distinguishes the author’s life into two parts is the realization that her husband, whom she fully adores in a way that borders on worrying, isn’t who she thought he was. Later, she decides he’s a SOCIOPATH. Dun dun dun!
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Oh, also they have a newborn baby. So that ups the stakes.
I really liked the first half of this book. I read it in a sitting. It’s sooooo next-level intense - I can’t stop using that word - and Jen keeps realizing stuff and you’re like WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN?! JEN, WHAT’S HAPPENING?! TELL ME JEN! The Before/After stuff works really well here.
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The second half...I’m like, not as into. This may sound totally b*tchy of me, so bear with me, okay? I’m sorry about who I am as a person.
At this point, the Before/After stuff becomes less helpful. Because lovely Jen then has to make us realize stuff about her husband in the “Before” sections...even though she totally wasn’t realizing it at the time. Which feels forced.
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Oh GOD I miss Michelle Obama. Anyway. The other thing about this book is...I don’t think anyone in it understands sociopathy. Including the frequently-featured therapist. Because this acts like the answer to why every marriage has ever gone wrong in the history of time. Your fiancé left you? Sociopath. Your husband took your money and split? Textbook sociopath. Your dad’s been married five times? Total f*ckin’ psycho. And I’m just sitting there like…
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I don’t. In terms of experience I have, like, a high school-level intro to psych class and every true crime story I can get my hands on. But there are two things I definitely for-sure know about sociopaths. (Yes, one of them is from the podcast Serial, what of it??? It’s the story that changed a nation!)
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Okay, so. Those two things. One, there aren’t that many sociopaths in the world. (This is the one I know from Serial.) So when you’re constantly like, “hey, maybe that dude who took the last popsicle from the communal box is a sociopath!” that’s not the most legitimate possibility. And two, they’re really flippin’ hard to diagnose. So, while Jen should start off this book like:
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She comes into it like “HEY HERE ARE ANSWERS” and throws 265 pages at us. And her stupid therapist Lisa doesn’t help. Lisa is the psychology-major equivalent of that professor who throws a textbook in the trashcan and says to call him by his first name. Even though I’m 97% sure therapists aren’t supposed to just...diagnose people they’ve never goddamn met based purely off the testimony of their traumatized and estranged spouses, Lisa’s all, “Oh my god...based off the one hour I’ve known you...I think your husband might be a total freaking psycho!!!!” Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is if a certain Maine-based therapy practice loses its license for employing a woman whose only certification is a Starbucks rewards card, I called it.
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Also, the second half of the book is a lot more boring than the first half. But that makes sense. Because at a certain point, it has to become Here Is My Progress Here Is My Life Now. And I appreciate that that has to happen and all. It can’t all be me having fun with the tragedies in the lives of others. I’m not a sociopath.
Or am I?
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Bottom line: I recommend this. It’s not perfect (in the writing especially), but it’s pretty fascinating and better than I expected....more
this has been another installment of project 5 star, an ill-advised undertaking in which i reread books i at one time loved in order to test a) my affthis has been another installment of project 5 star, an ill-advised undertaking in which i reread books i at one time loved in order to test a) my affections and b) presumably my will to live.
this was a particularly nerve-wracking one, seeing as i do not remember anything about this book, least of all why i five starred it.
life does contain its pleasant surprises. allegedly. so i was ready. in a way. and this was fun! very fun.
but not a five star read.
it was fun (how many times can i say that), and cool and eerie, but it wasn't as fun or as cool or as eerie as coraline. this won't stay with me as long, sadly, and i think the lack of memorableness of character and story (although not setting) is what took this down from 5 to 3.5.
it must have hit me at quite a particular moment, back in 2017!
or maybe i just used to have a soul.
hard to imagine.
bottom line: a good time, but not a perfect world-changing memorable beloved 5 star time.
I just managed to get through a book - a whole freaking book - with no blatant sexism, racism, homophobia, girl-on-girl hate, instances of the beloved not like other girls trope, love triangles, flat characters, overused archetypes, that plotline where you discover your power and it’s consuming you, gag-worthy romance, weird writing quirks, overwrought emotion, social issues used to make it seem ~profound~, apocalyptically bad characters, or plot slowness. In the year of our Lord two thousand and seventeen.
I’m in shock. I have gotten so freaking used to hating books - and it’s not even that I choose to! It’s just...what are the chances of a book not containing one of those things? If you take my 2017 reading challenge so far as your not-so-random sample (I'm in a stat class, can you tell?), the chance is 2/36. Because out of the 36 books I’ve read this year, this is only the second I’ve given five stars. So I guess I’m really covering my bases on the negatives. No one can call me problematic, baby!
But anyway, there’s good news in that paragraph of sad - besides just how woke I am. The good news is that this book is essentially perfect. According to my tried-and-true method - the one that skyrocketed me to fame, you guys - The Graveyard Book just full on rocks in every category. So let’s go through those categories!
First, the setting. (If you somehow have managed to see this review without seeing my Caraval review, 1) congrats and 2) I’ve declared settings to be my favorite thing.) This book takes places in a motherf*cking graveyard, baby. (Let me know when I’ve said baby too many times. Oh, it already happened? Yeah, fair.) Anyway, graveyards are cool as hell. Setting a book there? Specifically in one with thousands of years of history and a historic monument on the grounds? Even cooler.
And you know what graveyards mean, guys. Ghosts. YES, I AM INTERESTED IN A BOOK THAT CENTERS ON GHOSTS. ANY BOOK. GIVE ME ANY GHOST BOOK. But especially one that starts off with a ghastly death. (That’s not a spoiler. It’s literally the beginning of the book.) Anyway, this is everything I love combined.
So, as I mentioned with an excess of enthusiasm a second ago, almost every character in this book is a ghost. Or at the very least, the type of creepy little thing that spends most of its time in a graveyard. (A handful of human characters who are probably Tim Burton fans included. It seems like Tim Burton fans would force themselves to hang out in graveyards just for the aesthetic. You feel me?) Anyway, it should go without saying that the characters are great. They’re graveyard inhabitants.
This book also has a little bit of magic in it. MAGIC, I SAY! A very cool kind of magic. It gives you a hint of the creeps when it happens. I’m not going to say any more than that! Read to find out, as my elementary school librarian would say.
Other than that...this book is bananas well written. An absolute pleasure to pick up. The title is great. (More books should just be named The Subject Thing. Like The LEGO Movie. That was a successful film. Take a hint.) Also fast-paced. Made me feel emotions. (A truly rare occurrence.) Cute ending. What more can I say?
Bottom line: READ THIS BOOK. READ IT READ IT READ IT. I never like anything and I loved this. (hide spoiler)]...more
This book is quite a feat, either way. You can read essentially ANY THEME into this novel: good and evil, race, religion, gender, science, wealth, power, abstinence, war, colonization. More, probably, but it’s a Monday and I had four hours straight of math tonight and I’m sleeeeepy. Anyway, that all sounds peachy keen, right? Emma, I imagine you saying, what do you mean it could be shitty? Look at all those themes! It’s the great Irish novel, maybe! I know, imaginary reader. I hear ya. But there are things about this book that are even weirder than that quasi-sex scene. (The joke is that you can’t tell which one. There are a million symbolic moments of characters gettin’ it on. Truly wild.)
BUT OKAY. It’s not just that there are a bajillion themes. Because that would be cool. No, it’s that you can make an argument for either side of every theme. Sexist or feminist; condemning religion or supporting it; racist or accepting; et cetera et cetera. The book is also straight up teeming with stuff like repetition that can either be thematically significant or just a bad job. (Can you imagine being the editor of this book? “Uh, Bram?…Hey buddy. So, you use essentially the same passage describing Dracula’s powers three times in one chapter, so – I was, you know, wondering – are you a genius or a total dumbass?” If I achieve my dream of being an editor/publisher I’m only editing YA. Too scary.)
The upside of all this was that this book was such a blast to discuss in class. (A substantial f*cking improvement from slogging through boring old Huck Finn everyday for two weeks.) We would spend like an hour on a page, trying to discern sexism from feminism and desperately seeking homosexual overtones. (OH BOY DID WE FIND THEM, AND OH BOY DID WE LOVE DOING IT.) Anyway. In-depth textual analysis is like, my favorite thing.
This shindig was intermittently a blast (ohmygod! Vampires were fun even in 1897!) and soooo boring (ohmygod. What is up with plotlines from 1897). Still, I gotta give mad props to this book, because I read it EXCLUSIVELY by forcing myself through it in 110-page chunks in one work-study shift…and I still enjoyed it most of the time. That never happens! Sure as shit didn’t happen with Huck Finn.
The characters really sucked, but that happens a lot with classics. Weird that a handful of these endured, though. I won’t miss them even if I end up missing reading this. (It’s been a big part of my life for a while! Okay, like a couple weeks, but that’s a long time for me.)
But I do think this book is sexist, and I don’t think it’s close to perfect, and there are creepy issues with consent and metaphoric sexual assault and gender roles, and I wanted to write a paper on this book being an allegory of the battle between science and religion (religion won, guys!) but was FORCED to write on gender, the most clichéd topic of them all. Still, though, this book impressed me. (To clarify I wasn’t excited that religion won. I’m excited that said conclusion fit with my hypothetical essay.)
Bottom line: I think I liked this? I definitely recommend it. It’s cool to see what started (not actually but don’t @ me) all our cultural whatnot with vampires. (Still not that into them though. I say while technically currently reading some dumb book about them.)...more
I thought I knew better. I saw the unbelievably low average rating on this book and thought, Nah. It’ll be fine. I likeOKAY, FINE. YOU WERE ALL RIGHT.
I thought I knew better. I saw the unbelievably low average rating on this book and thought, Nah. It’ll be fine. I liked literally one single book that Stephanie Perkins wrote so I should have faith in her, even though I’ve one starred twoothers. Even though that 33% success rate was with contemporaries, a genre I actually like, and this book is horror, supposedly, which I am very, very picky with.
I picked up this book anyway.
And I expected to like it.
I did not like it.
This is not, as I am sure you have heard by now, a horror book. This is not scary. It is in fact very boring. It also does not devote all that much page time to the serial killer in this town, which is, um, what I signed up for.
Instead, it devotes a hell of a lot of pages to a romance.
Truly, I’d be fine with that. If this was a fun fluffy romance with a serial killer in the background...that’s something I could get into.
Unfortunately, this romance was neither “fun” nor “fluffy” nor any other remotely positive word. Instead, it was very very very very very gross, and very very very very insta-love-y, and I did not care for it one bit.
The main (and potentially only) good thing about this book was that it was very diverse. In the past, Stephanie Perkins’s books have been surprisingly diverse for the year they were published, but not really anything to write home about. This one was very impressive on that front.
But, to reiterate, it was not impressive on any other fronts whatsoever. I want to make that very clear.
Bottom line: I should’ve listened to literally everyone.
------- pre-review
well.
should've seen this one coming.
review to come / 1.5 stars
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book: *has super low average rating, is by an author I've one-starred twice before, isn't even a genre I read often*
me: wow.....I can't wait to read this :)
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hoping there's a british/french/american boot-wearing hottie in this one.
Yup, that’s me. Scarlett Dragna, main character of the YA hit Caraval. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this *record scratch*
*freeze frame*
Yup, that’s me. Scarlett Dragna, main character of the YA hit Caraval. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation. If everysinglethingthathappenedinthiswholebook was anything to go by, it was through a combination of pointless lying, constant embarrassment, obsession with Some Guy, a big act of caring about a younger sister despite very little indication of that being true, unrelenting drama about a dumb wedding, repetitive interactions, weird descriptions, gender-based generalizations, and insanely personal info-dumps about emotional happenings from the past.
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(insert elegant bow here) And that, my dear friends, is my Scarlett Dragna impression. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Oh, please, stop with the standing ovation! I’m just like all of you. Except I possess such bitterness and have such a grasp of the future that I wrote a character description at the 25% mark, and god did it hold up.
Yup. You guessed it. I didn’t like my most anticipated book of the year.
(What a surprise! you probably all chant in unison.)
I almost felt guilty about writing a negative review about this book - because it’s about to be damn negative - but then I remembered it’s THIS BOOK’S FAULT. It marketed its damn self as a young adult The Night Circus. It must take some serious goddamn gonads to look at a masterpiece, essentially magic with a front and back cover, and go, “Yeah. My book is just like that.” Spoiler alert: it’s really, really not.
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Oh, God, this review is going to be long. My bullet point list of notes alone is long. And I am putting away fruit snacks like nobody’s business, so I’ve got enough sugar in my system to sustain a lengthy burst of anger. Strap in, everybody! (Note from later: I sugar-crashed when I was almost done this review. But it did last me through most of it.)
THE SETTING
All I want is a good setting. All those times I said I just want a good character to love and settle down with, I think - and relish this rare gift of a moment - I think I was wrong. I think I care most about settings. (Hence why books with magnificent settings get five star ratings no matter what.) And thus, it is my curse to eternally pick up every book that is compared to The Night Circus.
This book does not have a good setting. It’s confusing: everything that seems solid is gone back on later. Nothing is real. That doesn’t lead to a good setting. But I’ll talk more about the constant, piece of sh*t cop-outs later in this review. It lacks the strong descriptions that a setting literally needs. It doesn’t feel magical at all. (More on that later, too.) But above all, it’s not goddamn GROUNDED.
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Haha. That GIF made me feel a little better. Thank you, my favorite person of all time forever, Bo Burnham. Anyway, as I was saying. This. Is. Not. Grounded. In Round 14 of 3947234829 why The Night Circus is better than this book and the latter should never have been compared, TNC takes place in our world. Yeah. The author (presumably) realized 1) maybe we need a little bit of magic! And 2) she couldn’t create one of the greatest settings of all time while also establishing a fantasy world. It would have weakened the whole book.
But Stephanie Garber did NOT make the same choice. Instead, we’re unceremoniously dumped into a world where there are islands and colonizing empires and that CLASSIC YA trope of using clunky terms to differentiate the world from the real one (like Hot Season, because they don’t have WORDS FOR THE SEASONS). Even more fun, during this book characters travel between countries/colonies/islands/empires/I have no idea, and the reader has NO GODDAMN CLUE WHAT IS GOING ON.
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Alright, I think I’ve talked about the setting for too long. I see that now. But this is an UNFORGIVABLE OFFENSE, OK?
THE CHARACTERS
We’re introduced to a world’s worth of characters here, and this book achieves quite a feat - they all manage to be either flat, boring, or both! Yaaaaay! I’m totally ready to try to pretend to feel emotionally connected to these goons for 400 pages!!
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First: Scarlett. Cannot believe we were trapped inside the head of the most boring character of all time throughout what was supposed to be a suspenseful thrill ride! (But, obviously, was not.) She’s easily embarrassed, obsessed with propriety, falls in pretty much instalove with Julian because he’s hot. Lies all the time because poor widdle gal is embarrassed of something or other about herself. Super weak. Constantly questioning her own reasoning and letting others make decisions for her. Tries to act like she’s a protective older sister, but, speaking as a protective older sister, she doesn’t give much of a sh*t about family when she’s staring into Julian’s eyes or literally sucking his fingers.
But then we get into a whole different type of characters: Those who, by the end, we know NOTHING. ABOUT. Tella, Julian, Legend. We’re given descriptions of them that are gone back on, returned to, and gone back on again. Nothing is real. The whole thing is confusing and an absolute waste of energy. I came SO GODDAMN CLOSE to DNFing this book because it has about 100 twists and none of them make sense. I wanted to shake myself out of a nightmare. What the hell was going on for 400 pages?!
Beyond that, they’re boring and I don’t want to talk about them. And so were the “villains.” Scarlett and Tella’s dad is literally ruthless for no reason. His wife left him and now he plays psychological games of abuse with his daughters. There’s a moment where he essentially tries to get his daughter’s fiancé to rape her. And for what reason? It makes no sense. No sense at all. He slaps a random girl across the face at one point, murders some random dude. I don’t know what excuse to make for that except that this book is sloppy.
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THE PLOT
Word to the wise...if you haven’t read this book, you may want to skip this section. Even the stuff I don’t mark as spoilers may be somewhat spoilery. I’ll try, kind of.
So this book centers on Caraval, the supposedly wonderful setting I’ve already moped about for way too long. Caraval attracts a bunch - well, an unknown number of people, and is supposed to be a scavenger-hunt-style game. Somehow, though, in spite of the bajillion people who actually give a sh*t competing against her, Scarlett just stumbles into the goddamn clues.
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Here’s my world famous (I’ve become famous since the beginning of this review, right?) Scarlett impression, coming back to show you what following her through this shindig feels like. “Oh, this terrible poem-slash-cheat sheet I was unceremoniously given says I have to ‘earn’ the next clue! It’s probably just this thing I randomly picked up along my travels with zero fanfare! Or maybe it has something to do with a situation I just stumbled into! Doesn’t matter which choice I make, somehow it’ll be manipulated into being the right one!” Where are the stakes?!
I also feel like 80% of this is just us listening to boring old Scarlett being like, “Omg, I think Julian is lying to me. Whatever shall I do?! I don’t trust him!!! I just want to kiss his face off!!!” Etc, etc. And despite spending ALL OF HER TIME with him, she’s never just like:
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(view spoiler)[And when Scarlett’s piece of shit dad shows up with her fiancé to like, punch her in the stomach until she says she’ll make babies or whatever, she and luhhhhhhverboy have the DUMBEST REACTION. They get caught in a poor widdle thunderstorm, stop to make out for somewhere between 90 minutes and 7 hours, and get caught by the Dynamic Duo of Bad Characters…despite being about 1 f*cking yard away from an entrance to a hidden tunnel system. An entrance they knew about all along! I wish they both died. (hide spoiler)]
(view spoiler)[Also: two deaths, neither real, both anticlimactic and annoying. Not. A. Fan. That’s literally just a ploy to make it seem like your dumb book has the emotional depth it strives for. WHICH IT ABSOLUTELY DOESN’T. (hide spoiler)]
And this book is just one cop out after another. Weird choice to write a supposed ““““high fantasy”””” book without wanting to define your world at all! Everything that is said definitively is gone back on, so many conflicting descriptions of Caraval are given that I couldn’t summarize them if I tried, and on top of all that, we don’t even get answers at the Big Reveal.
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LANGUAGE
This book is written...weirdly. For one thing, Scarlett, in order to remind us of her special snowflake status, sees emotion in COLOR. It is straight up so annoying. Here are a handful of my least favorite instances, for your reading horror enjoyment. 1. “She could see the sting of her rejection in shades of stormy blue, ghosting over his heart like sad morning mist." 2. “Periwinkle curiosity” (I don’t know why I hate that one so much. I just really do.) 3. “It would have been a mistake to kiss him, yet she felt … disappointed. It came in cool shades of forget-me-not blue, which wrapped around her like evening fog, making her feel hidden enough to acknowledge that she wanted to experience more of Caraval’s pleasures than she would ever have admitted out loud.”
Did you notice anything besides how irritating that quirk is? Numbers 1 and 3 are pretty much the DAMN SAME. What the hell?!
The language in this book isn’t always AWFUL, it’s just...weird. Every sentence is very overwrought. Like, not everything has to have figurative language. Here’s my favorite example: The worst poem I have ever, ever read is in this book. And I’m an English major who hates poetry. Would you like to read it? "This girl was last seen with Legend. If you catch her, you shall catch him as well. Of course, you may have to venture through Hell. But if you succeed you may find yourself rich. This year’s winner will be granted one wish."
I do have to give this book some props, because this is the first time I have ever had to shut a book for 90 seconds in order to hysterically laugh. No one ever told me that the word “rich” rhymes with “wish”! Hahahaha. This poem should be used to teach the importance of using meter.
GENERAL STUPIDITY
I haven’t had the absolute privilege of writing one of these sections in a while! It’s like a homecoming. An unpleasant, unwanted homecoming. Like if my home was a festering swamp, or a city sewer system.
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Here’s one beautiful example - seriously, it’s like a gift from the reviewing gods: “Then she did her best to explain the truth about death and Caraval. Tella didn’t know the particulars as to how it worked. It was one of those things that people didn’t really talk about.” See what I mean?! Instead of the author coming up with an actual defined magic system, she just says “Oh, um...well the character doesn’t know. There’s that!” The world has no definition and neither does the magic. In other words, some of the sloppiest fantasy I’ve ever had the privilege to read.
Plus, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on with hooking up with your family members’ sloppy seconds. I don’t want to talk about it because I’m grossed the f*ck out. I just want to let everyone know I’m SUPER not a fan.
There’s also a fun moment where Scarlett lectures her sister on how “You can’t be in love with someone you just met,” even though a) she fell in luuurve with Julian in less than 5 days and b) she was planning on marrying someone she’d never met, and thought she could tell he was a good guy THROUGH LETTERS. So dumb.
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And then maybe my favorite moment of all: When a fortune teller tells Scarlett she wants “love and protection,” her reaction is even worse than I would have expected from a character I hate. She says, “Isn’t that what every girl wants?” WHAT. THE. DAMN. HELL. No! No, not every girl, you piece of shit! It’s fine to want that, but some girls want adventure and knowledge and friendship and bravery and the ability to look out for their damn selves! What the actual f*ck?!
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Bottom line: I can’t believe how much I hated this book. (Or how long this review is.) Boring setting, boring characters, boring plot. Overall confusing language and decisions and reveals. I honestly wish I had never read this book....more
just realized i have a ton of backed-up reviews i've never posted. so strap in, because this one is a very negative and very long one.
1/5 (0/5 if I cjust realized i have a ton of backed-up reviews i've never posted. so strap in, because this one is a very negative and very long one.
1/5 (0/5 if I could do it)
I don’t take notes on every book I review. If I do, it’s because I’m worried about forgetting my thoughts in the earlier sections (i.e., I’m either reading it too slowly or too quickly) or--and I think you can guess which category this book falls into--I really cannot stand the process of reading the book.
My notes on this book fall into two categories: 1) poor writing, and 2) overall dumbness, for lack of a better word. Each have quotes to back up my harsh opinion.
Let’s start with the poor writing. This book features one of my personal literary pet peeves (and one I haven’t encountered since I read fanfiction as a preteen): an American who attempts--and nearly always fails--to write as a Brit. It often comes off as too try-hard-y, with British slang pouring off dialogue, but this one didn’t even try. The author didn’t even bother to control-F-change “Mom” to “Mum.” This was also just teeming with unnecessary and boring details. One time, the protagonist’s mother nods: this is described as a “motherly, reassuring, thoughtful, vaguely uncertain nod of the head.” I couldn’t believe it. At one point, the perspective--which remains first person without exception--switches to 3rd person in the middle of a paragraph, then back. The narrator also considers (at length) cutting her hair before deciding it wouldn’t be as chic as her mom’s THREE TO FOUR TIMES. Then she does it, and it’s the same conversation again.
Onto the next point: general stupidity. Let me introduce this by saying that I enjoy a book about a sociopath. And that’s what I thought I was getting: the cover’s tagline is “Perfect in her methods, precise in her madness.” But Kit is far from emotionless (unfortunately, since her emotions are always a chore)--she’s just honestly stupid, or a flat character, or both. She does things she absolutely does not want to do (I won’t say what exactly, for the sake of spoilers) for no reason. And despite being dubbed the “Perfect Killer,” she’s not that good at what she does. She is spotted at one of her crime scenes three times, and has two close calls. She befriends one victim, is convinced by another not to kill her, and punches one in the face in front of the entire student body of her high school. (To the latter, she follows up with: “I’ll get you like I get the rest [...] I’ll kill you.”)
Her M.O. as a serial killer (beyond the “perfect” nature of her crimes) is that she leaves the letters requesting that particular victim to be killed with the victim’s body. If you’re like me, you’re thinking: That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. It’s not just the hitman who can get convicted, it’s the person who hires the hitman. And it’s easy to tell who wrote the letters. Our protagonist clears this up by saying that she cleans the handwritten letters of fingerprints, and because of this there can’t be a conviction or even an arrest. BECAUSE APPARENTLY HANDWRITING EXPERTS DON’T EXIST. God.
Kit is not smart, but apparently nobody told her (or the author) that. The narrative just takes aspects of her that are stupid and deems them intelligent. One example comes from Kit’s initial conversation with the police officer in charge of her case: “‘But you’re running the show, aren’t you?’ I regretted that comment. It sounded too intelligent.”
There’s another thing that bugged me about that secret mailbox of letters. People tack on money to their handwritten letters, which doesn’t super make sense since Kit doesn’t kill everyone, but whatever. My main problem is that the mailbox is very commonly known in the seedy underground of London--so why doesn’t anyone steal the money? It’s behind a loose tile in the women’s bathroom of a café!
Kit’s motivation for being a murderer is solely rooted in the motivations of her mother. Apparently her mother had been a serial killer but almost got caught and had to stop, so she trained her daughter and is able to satisfy her violent tendencies through the knowledge that Kit is murdering. Which doesn’t make sense, because that’s not how violence works, and also Kit feels things, often anti-murder emotions, and this motivation just doesn’t seem strong enough to me.
And I wish I could say this book was at least thrilling or entertaining. But I never enjoyed reading this. So…
I’ve never read anything like this book before!! And I’m also pretty certain I never will again. It didn’t drip with gaudy description, but I could picture everything. I can’t remember the last time I felt that way. Also, I loved that like, the most insanely background characters were fuller than most YA protagonists. Because y’all know I’m a sucker for a good character.
I like to think I’m a pretty smart person, but I was pretty much confused for the entirety of those 388 pages. Granted, I’m not really an expert on space or math or anything (English, you may not be surprised to learn, is my main schtick) but I did feel stupid every once in awhile (usually when I felt like my lack of understanding was making me miss a major plot point). Sometimes that was fine, and sometimes it was too much.
388 pages may not seem like a lot, but they were huge pages and a fairly small font and this book did drag a bit sometimes. (May have to do with how hard it could be to read.)
But I’m still givin’ it the big 4, because it’s so insane and imaginative and unique and really more of an Experience than a book. And you can’t undermine that.
Bottom line: if you have a lot of energy, a not-too-busy week, and confidence in your own intelligence that can withstand this, get your hands on a copy!!
P.S. How'd I forget to mention how much I love this guy's writing style?! Like:
Dear Mr. Scott Hawkins, Do you have any grocery lists I can read? Also: thank you for your book. Also also: how in the hell did you come up with ANY of it. Much love, respect, gratitude, etc., Some idiot...more
i really thought i was going to hate this book. i mean, a girl resisting falling in love with her hot kidnapper? puh-lease. but its goodreads rating ii really thought i was going to hate this book. i mean, a girl resisting falling in love with her hot kidnapper? puh-lease. but its goodreads rating is killer and i found it at half price books, so i figured why not. but i was wrong: this was a good book.
i am not easily won over by YA romantic storylines, i like to think, and especially not those that appear to be based on stupid decisions like in this book. but the kidnapper and the victim were both full characters, and i was able to at least understand their reasoning while i internally screamed at them to stop being weird. at times, i even understood the more romantic feelings, so that's saying something.
but still, even a not-horrible take on a storyline i hate is a storyline i hate. so i can't give this a very high rating - it was incredibly on my nerves at points....more
i received this book through a goodreads giveaway. reviewing books received through giveaways is encouraged but not required.
i was...not a fan of thisi received this book through a goodreads giveaway. reviewing books received through giveaways is encouraged but not required.
i was...not a fan of this book. it was boring, for one thing. though i also didn't love the one i just read that took place in the 19th century, at least i could call that one exciting. this one, not so much.
also, the protagonist was fairly unlikable and also pretty dumb. you know how once in a while a protagonist will do something silly, or not see something perceived as obvious, and they're all "oh, i'm so stupid!" and how most of the time you can forgive them, because either a) it's understandable or b) you liked them? well, neither a nor b is the case in this book, though the protagonist bemoans herself a fool several times.
there were not one, but two romances in this book. i hesitate to call them "torrid," because it seems like an even stronger word is necessary. our lovely protagonist (Katherine--called Kat by her friends, because that's so 1820s) falls in love with 2 uncharacterized, flat dudes she has encountered only a handful of times, respectively.
(view spoiler)[here's a specific thing that just kind of grinds my gears. the wonderful Kat ends up in an ASYLUM toward the end--classic--and not only is she, education-free, smart enough to determine that the highly normalized treatments of the time (i.e., leeching) are not a-O.K., she FREES EVERY SINGLE INHABITANT OF THE ASYLUM. FREES THEM. even operating under the character's naïve assumption that everysingleoneofthem is as wrongfully imprisoned as she is, they'd need some sort of treatment for what they'd just gone through! but nooooo. instead, Kat frees them all, either sending them back to their families--which even loverboy #2 William Simpson halfheartedly declares "for better or worse"--or EMPLOYING THEM. IN HER MANOR. BECAUSE (hide spoiler)]IF ALL THAT SILLINESS WEREN'T ENOUGH, THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF THIS BOOK IS THAT SOME FARMGIRL IN VIRGINIA IS A LONG-LOST ENGLISH LADY.
it's been a long time since i gave a book one star. but man, i didn't enjoy this one at all....more
please do not read this review if you have any intention of reading this book, or if you're gazing at it fondly, or if you heard of it in a past life,please do not read this review if you have any intention of reading this book, or if you're gazing at it fondly, or if you heard of it in a past life, or if you in any way would be upset at a plot spoiler.
because i've racked my brain and tried my darnedest, but there's just no way i can review this without telling you guys one particular thing.
and that is that this book, a young adult thriller, which purports itself to be spooky and high stakes and psychological...
is, in point of fact, weekend at bernie's.
the last 50 pages of this, what should be the most climactic bit, is instead a (to me) hilarious romp through life with a corpse.
also it's boring. but more importantly - flippin weekend at bernie's!
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago...more
Why have I been putting this review off for so long? (Seven months, to be exact?)
Is it because this book was so profoundly eh that I can’t talk about Why have I been putting this review off for so long? (Seven months, to be exact?)
Is it because this book was so profoundly eh that I can’t talk about it for longer than a paragraph?
Is it because it’s so unmemorable that I’d forgotten major plot points in a few days, so things could only be reallyyyy bad after MONTHS?
Or is it because this book was not so bad that it really needs to be roasted, and probably no one really cares to see a review of it anyway?
If you answered “all of the above,” YOU’RE TODAY’S LUCKY WINNER!!!
I am just going to impart to you the five (five) bullet point notes I still have on this book in the depths of my phone, and add onto them to the absolute best of my ability.
1) “so slow for 250 pages and suddenly choppy-fast”
Well that doesn’t sound good! Or particularly thrilling, really! Why are thrillers so continuously bad! Why do they disappoint me always!
2) “stupid”
Awesome, past me. So wise of you. Thanks for that.
3) “poorly edited”
At least this point is fairly self-explanatory. God almighty.
4) “watered down Gillian Flynn”
The worst sin a thriller can commit, other than being comparable to The Girl on the Train in any way. Honestly thrillers fall into one of three categories: good, wannabe Flynn, Girl on the Train.
Those are in order from best to HORRIBLE OH GOD NIGHTMARE GET ME OUT OF HERE.
5) “Cinderella doesn’t have a long blond braid”
Oh I actually do remember this. Kind of. I’m realizing now that “remember” is a very strong word. Buuuut, some character or other has some Cinderella fixation, and somebody goes to Disney World at the end and sees a “princess with a long blond braid in a blue dress” or something to that effect and we’re supposed to just know it’s ol’ Cindy.
To which I scream from the rooftops:
CINDERELLA DOES NOT HAVE A BRAIIIIIIIID. YOU BUFFOON.
This seems like enough.
Bottom line: This is a small amount of vague information, but does it convince you to just...try another thriller?
Thanks to Penguin Random House for sending me an ARC of this straight up two years ago. Nailed it once again, Emma. ...more
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