I’ll put it this way: this was not the book I wanted to admit I was reading when a prospective student asked me that question in an interview earlier this week.
I’ve now reached the 250+ point on my wish list and can’t seem to stop adding books (thanks for all the suggestions, guys!), so it can be frustrating to me when I’m not absolutely in love with one that I read. I recognize that at this rate- and if I never added another book- it would take me five years to finish the entire list. I know that there’s no way of knowing how I’ll feel about a book before I read it and that part of this project is accepting that some books will click and others won’t. I’m not willing to feel defeated after two weeks in a row of lackluster reading, but I am definitely going to be making some more thoughtful reading choices in the coming weeks.
Again, I’m not sure how this book ended up on my list, but I (again) was looking for a lighter read to offset some of the other responsibilities I had this past week. Maybe that’s the lesson to be learned- if I love a book, it will be compelling and easy to get through no matter the page length.
This book was fine– that’s the word that keeps popping into my head. It was certainly easy to read, both in structure and in storyline. I loved the switches between present and past, as well as the consistency of the supporting characters. But the main characters were kind of…two dimensional. The characters were all seemingly written in extremes- a mean one had to be so, so unrealistically mean; the nice ones were, frankly, pathetic. The story itself was pretty predictable too.
All of that is to say, there is nothing inherently wrong with this book- it served its quick and non-taxing reading purpose- but I kind of wish I had read something else.
You’ll like this if: you’re looking for a less compelling A Hundred Summers or any other similar book that alternates between present day and the past.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 