10.07.24
From the Shari Lapena school of telling, not showing, this was a long, often grammatically dodgy synopsis with too many expositional flashbacks and not enough emotional development or psychological realism. I only read it because it was (partly) set in my local area, but it could have been anywhere.
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.
04.01.24
Towards the end of this book, the protagonist (and simultaneous antagonist) comments on her 'striking unlikeability and attention-seeking punctuation'. Both these things are true, although we are apparently supposed to believe she is an unreliable narrator, safe in the unquestioning love of her family and (second) husband. The structure was circular and meandering, presumably like the narrator's mind, but that didn't bother me as much as the entitled middle-classness of it all.55%
For some reason, my extrovert friends are horrified when I tell them I'm an introvert, as if it's something bad. The introvert author of this book seems to agree with them and decided to act (sometimes literally act) like an extrovert for a year. I found it quite hard to relate to - even the title seemed odd, as I'd never dream of being late for anything. And I wasn't sure why it involved doing things that many extroverts wouldn't want to do either, such as stand-up comedy and talking about Deep Feelings at inappropriate moments. But it was a readable slice of life, I suppose.
17.07.22
Apparently, there's a subgenre called 'rich people dramas' and this is a prime example. I don't mind reading about impossibly entitled people - I mean, isn't imagining other's experiences what novels are for? - but this was just very boring. I was ready to give up when Something Suddenly Happened... and then it went back to being boring. We Were Liars was indulgent and predictable but at least it wasn't dull.
12.05.22
This was fun as a psychopath primer, should The Psychopath Test not be enough. How they interacted - or not quite interacted - with each other was particularly intriguing. But the plot was badly paced and made no sense, with an irrelevant background of political protests that had no bearing on anything, and there were enough typos to break the story world on several occasions.
07.07.21
I realised what the story was really about halfway through (spoiler: it was the same pretty obvious twist as in a book I read last year) but I still cried at the end. It's a sophisticated YA novel, portraying the complex self-absorption of teens and, yes, the characters and their circumstances are unsympathetic and the writing style is annoyingly mannered, but that's, y'know, the whole point.
66%
