Holli

Frustrating

Reviewed: 05-17-20

I liked the premise of this book, and I loved the author’s note, and the opening of the book. It had a lot of potential. But for a bunch of characters who are supposedly so full of kindness and compassion, they sure don’t exhibit much of either. And boy howdy, talk about impatient. Darrin and Finn both seem to be of the attitude “Yes, well, your life may have been an absolute nightmare from the moment you were born until the moment you showed up on our doorstep, but it’s perfect now, so just immediately get over all your trauma and learned ways of coping with the world and meet us on our terms RIGHT NOW.” And NONE of these fuckers has the slightest concept of boundaries, much less respect for them. Adam actually does a great job expressing his needs and boundaries, and they stomp all over them and then blame him and yell at him for trying to fix the mess they made.

I am something like 3/4 of the way through, and I don’t know if I’ll finish, because honestly, I am getting angrier by the minute. The cat thing just pushed me over the edge to write this review. I just cannot believe the author can describe people that callous and inconsiderate as kind or compassionate.


Just, as a note to authors? You can’t just SAY things about your characters and have them be true. You have to demonstrate through their actions and dialogue how they are as people. If the description and actions/dialogue don’t match up, it causes cognitive dissonance in your reader, and that is never going to go well.

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1 person found this helpful

I hate writing reviews, but I needed to share

Reviewed: 04-12-20

This book was just sort of magical. From the very first word, the language choices, the characters, the narration and the world just all sort of combined to make you feel transported to some magical other world where almost anything is possible. I was shocked when the story ended, because all of a sudden I had to face going back to the real world and I was not prepared.
It is a pretty low-angst story with very little confrontation, and very little drama, which sounds boring, but wasn’t.
I loved the characters. Probably the closest thing to a flaw, and still isn’t necessarily, was I’d have liked to have had a little more closure on Gareth’s story. I’m hoping he will get his own book, although that one might not be so low-angst...

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6 people found this helpful

Work in progress

Reviewed: 09-06-19

I'll come back and update if/when I finish the book--I'm only about 3 hours in right now. I just had to vent my frustration at the beginning of this book. Briddey is such a complete wet rag. She has zero boundaries and her relationships with her family are so co-dependent it isn't even funny. I don't know how she manages to have a job--irl, employers would fire you if you spent all day managing family business instead of actual work, and especially if the entire tribe showed up to forcefully remove you from work before the end of the day. This part of the book is so aggravating and frustrating, it makes it hard to want to continue, even though the actual story is fascinating. So far, I'm interested enough in where the actual story is going to go that I'm hanging on, but if Briddey doesn't stand up to her family soon, I'm gonna end up rage-quitting. Honestly, I feel sorry for her, because the family seem bent on her personal destruction. I know that a Connie Willis book can get a little rambly, which is normally desirable! I LOVED every single thing about Doomsday Book! But the side trips on this one are just so mentally unhealthy it's hard to take.

Well, I finished it. I was right that the main plot was good. The way she resolved the major conflict was cool and unexpected. Briddey's familial relationships may have altered, but not necessarily in the way I would have liked to have seen, but I think it became less of a concern for her, maybe? *shrug* Overall, not my favorite Connie Willis book, but I finished it, which with my attention span these days, that's saying something.

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Mixed feelings

Reviewed: 05-04-19

The characters were well-written, and their relationships with each other and their families felt real. The book feels like a morality play, to a certain extent. The moral was heavy-handed, although I appreciate that people are writing books about how hard life is for teens in general, and the added difficulty of being lgbtq.
The details, though... it felt like it was set in 1990. Tapes? A chain-smoking teen? The over-all homophobic atmosphere? Oof. Or the author hasn’t really paid attention to teen culture since 1990... this part made it pretty painful to get through, honestly. Of course, I say that, but at the same time, when it ended I burst out “Wait, that’s it?!” So... lol Yeah. 4 stars.

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3 people found this helpful

Cute but severely problematic

Reviewed: 04-28-19

I am concerned this book is being read by young people who may think the behavior in it is acceptable. Rafe’s parents are HORRIBLE. They forcefully outed him, not once, but TWICE, and the moral of the story ends up being that Rafe merely didn’t appreciate them enough? His mother had developed her entire identity based on being the mother of a gay kid, and can’t deal with losing that identity, so instead of supporting his attempt at self-discovery, she tries to force him back into the box that supports her identity. And Dad is so dependent on this identity that when asked to consider that it may not be the case, he breaks down in tears? That is manipulative and extremely toxic. These people are co-dependent and emotionally abusive and I’m supposed to go along with this moral that they are just loving and supportive and Rafe needed to learn how to appreciate all that? NO.
The teacher was a potentially great learning source, and I do feel like Rafe learned and grew from what were effectively low-key therapy sessions via writing, but that is in no way sufficient to offset the horror of the boundary-stomping, manipulative parents who are so enmeshed in their kid’s identity that they appear to have lost all sense of self separate from him.
I really wanted this book to be enjoyable. At the beginning, I liked Rafe, and thought it was an interesting idea he had for exploring his identity and relationships with others. And obviously he had to get 2500 miles away from his parents to have the freedom to do that, but I am not sure he really got much useful out of it, or rather, the useful stuff he got out of it wasn’t a plausible conclusion based on what transpired in the book. But either way, by the end, I was pretty sick of him and how self-obsessed he was anyway. For a book that started with so much potential, it sure crashed and burned.

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