Orbiting Jupiter, is one of Zoella’s Book Club pick for 2017, and I would like to discuss it with you guys. This will be completely SPOILER FREE, so fear not, but heads up, it wasn’t may favourite.
Plot:
The plot is not a bad plot. It’s the story of a fourteen year old boy, Joseph, who moves in with a new foster family, from a juvenile detention centre, or at the very least some sort of school for unruly teens. He’s already got a girl pregnant, and now has a daughter, Jupiter, who he’s not allowed to see. And that’s just the background info, for this book. Schmidt has done a brilliant job fitting so much plot into such a little book, and it’s an interesting, unusual look at teenage life.
Characters:
For me the problem lies with the characterisation in this book, in the fact that there is none. I hate to be super critical but looking back now, the characters feel very flat, which makes it a real struggle to empathise with them at all. I understand, that in such a small amount of pages, it is difficult to create very much character depth at all, but at the same time this really is a character driven book, and wihoguh those characters to care for the plot just falls short.
Narration:
However, this may also be due to the narration technique used. Our narrator is Jack, and eleven year old boy, whose parents foster kids, so it’s though his eyes that we meet Joseph. Jack feels incredibly young, and maybe you want to ague that as a 21 year old girl, this books really wasn’t written for me, but Percy Jackson is 12, and I have no problems with him as a narrator. Jack creates a wall between you and the rest of the characters, somehow, which really takes you away from the story.
Cover:
What will stay with me most of all in regards to Orbiting Jupiter is how pretty it it. Yes, I know we shouldn’t judge books by their covers, but can we just take a moment to appreciate it.
Star Rating (out of 5):
