Every once in a while, I’ll read a book, and I don’t know what to think. Or, you know, every twice in a while.
Yup, it happened again.
This book…I just don’t know. On the one hand, it’s a beautiful story, it’s about love and sacrifice and healing. But something about it…just rubbed me the wrong way.
Maybe it was the tone. Something about the tone just didn’t seem right; it felt a little…overly formal. Even when the characters cursed (and oh my god, some of these characters really like to throw around the f-bomb), it still sounded strange, not quite authentic.
Maybe it was the voices, the story is told through the eyes of several characters. But for some reason, I had a really hard time pin-pointing who was talking when. All the characters seem to muddle into one voice, they don’t really have their own idiosyncrasies or way of thinking, it’s just all the same; makes for rather confusing reading.
Maybe it was the words. This is different from my complaint about tone. I’m one of those people who falls in love not so much with the story itself as the words that the author chooses to tell the story. I like storytelling that makes you think, gives you that twist at the base of your heart, makes you a little bleary eyed when you look up from the page, the kind of storytelling that drops you right in the middle of what it’s describing and makes you feel it, every last bit of what’s happening. I didn’t get that with this book, to me it felt like, “There’s this event, and this happened, and then this followed.” It was a mite disappointing.
But…if I’m being completely honest with myself, part of the problem was my attitude while reading it. To be frank, I’m exhausted; crazy work schedule, lack of quality sleep, et cetera, et cetera, and apparently, that really messes with my ability to just lose myself in a book.
So overall, the story was beautiful and heartwarming, but I wanted more from it. More depth, more words, more realness.
Or maybe I just needed a better attitude.
Here’s hoping the next book is better.
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