Maha
Pop Sugar Reading Challenge - A book with a three-word title
This book suffered from something I feel like many books do: a slow, almost boring start with a lot of exposition and introduction and a plotline that really only picks up speed about halfway into the book.
Normally that would warrant at most 3 stars, but with the exception of the pacing of the beginning I loved everything about this book.
Celeste Ng managed to give every character a distinct personality. Everyone felt incredibly human and real, noone seemed to just exist for the plot, not even short appearances and side characters. The relationships and family dynamics were amazing as well. When the plot picked up speed, I was fully immersed, I felt every emotion, I even sympathised with characters I disliked a lot and that never happens. Never.
I really look forward to read other books by Celeste Ng, her writing really blew me away.
Between this and Big Little Lies I seem to also have a thing for suburban drama, so that definitely helped.
Pop Sugar Reading Challenge - A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name
This book was amazing and the audio book was even better.
I loved the setting, I loved how Taylor Reid managed to have so many characters featured but have them all have a distinctive personality. I was instantly hooked.
I do think that without the audio book I would've only given 4 stars, but the full cast made the experience incredibly immersive and fun. The voice actors were amazing and fit the characters perfectly. I loved everything about it!
The book was well-written and the story itself very suspenseful, but I still kind of hated it if I'm being honest.
Everytime the book changes perspectives, in an attempt to flesh out all the characters, the author delves deeply into their psyche, mostly over at least five pages and describes in detail every thought process and what lead them to this exact point of the plot. I can understand the reasoning behind it and it was sometimes interesting but it interrupted the flow of the story for me. I found my eyes glazing over more than just a couple of times, and I started skipping sentences, even though the main plotline gripped me a lot and I was initially very immersed in the book.
This might be more of a personal problem, but I also had no connection to the main characters whatsoever, no opinion, no feelings, nothing. I would have preferred the time spent describing the side characters going into the development of the main cast.
(Maybe some research about League of Legends too? Ask someone actually playing video games? The game is being described so weirdly and plain wrong many times in the book. “Press magic or you'll fail” Really?)
I enjoy reading about the policework behind murder cases a lot, and in this aspect the book definitely delivered, so that kind of saved the book for me.
