56%
15.06.26It's not a bad book (it's in fact well written, well characterised, quite well plotted) but it's so unrelentingly depressing that I simply didn't want to read it. But, after many attempts, I forced my way to the end, but that was somehow even more depressing (spoiler! But this is Liz Nugent, after all: evidence #1; evidence #2).
When I gasped and rolled my eyes, and shouted a silent 'No!', it wasn't because of bad writing, for once - far from it. The time-hopping and head-hopping structure worked well in slowly revealing the full - and awful - implications of these three brothers' selfishness, even if it was pretty hard to tell their voices apart. I'm not sure the story was totally satisfying in the end but it was certainly well constructed.
02.03.24
Another distraction from the slog of Ordinary Monsters, this was deceptively engaging - it was only afterwards that I realised what a dark story it was. But then it wasn't particularly realistic or subtle - Oliver was such a pantomime villain and most of the other narrators were so 'nice' that their behaviour wasn't very convincing and 'what happened and why' wasn't very satisfying. But it was a good read.
