In the Quick

Processing my thoughts. Full review to come.

2.5 ⭐️

I'm so sad to say that this just didn't work for me. I loved Day's debut novel, If, Then, and had high hopes for In The Quick. This just... fell completely flat for me. I didn't feel particularly connected to June or her life. While the story was just interesting enough for me to keep reading, I got to the end and thought, “What was the point?”

I wish I had more to say about this, but I've tried to write this review three times and just don't have anything to add. I found this nicely written but utterly forgettable. I'm hoping that I enjoy Day's next book as much as her first.

In The Quick (2021) is Kate Hope Day???s second novel (If, Then was released in 2019) that immediately grabs you with that ???Martian???-esque cover, (and while a touch of a survival story for a tiny bit of the latter half, that???s where the similarities end.) It has also been hailed as ???Jane Eyre in space??? ??? though I haven???t read Jane Eyre, I???ll refrain from confirming or denying. (Also, I had listened to this on audio, though other reviews state that there are no quotation marks used in the dialog in the print version which may make it a bit difficult to follow.)

This is the story of a young girl who was raised in the shadow of her brilliant engineer uncle who developed the fuel cells . She???s developed a natural talent for picking apart household items to build robots to help her ailing aunt. Now that she???s heard the spacecraft Inquiry???s fuel cells have failed, she???s refused to believe that her uncle had made any mistakes in designing them and dedicates her time to reviewing his notes and memorizing the design. This part of the story builds her dedication and passion for engineering and her wish to travel to space. Though being as young as she is, there are not many around her life that share in that enthusiasm and we???re settled in to a pretty drab origin-story.

As time passes we follow June as attending the campus at Peter Reed, although gaining some reputation as the school founder???s daughter. She struggles to connect and stumbles her way into meeting some of her father???s previous students. We see some relationships develop and we???re stuck in a ???I know a better answer but no one will take me seriously and i don???t know how to explain it??? situation for the majority of the middle of the book.

Once a drastic move on June???s part pushes her into the ???candidate??? pool for the next mission, things get a bit interesting yet still there seems to be a cloud over the situation where June arbors hope and ideas that no one else wants to talk about.

Overall this book was a very straight-faced character-driven read scattered with hope and hardship. It was a steady flatline for me with minimal slopes and valleys. I didn???t feel a lot of emotion toward June and there were a lot of times where it seemed to shift focus and dove into non-relative details of June???s everyday tasks. While i suspected she would persevere obstacles with her ingenuity, getting there was a winding path. It was at some points predictable, and unsatisfying as to what was left off the page toward the end.

Your mileage may vary as this was a good story that would appeal to many non-scifi readers (and Jane Eyre fans) though I wouldn???t call this the ???female version of the Martian???. It is a story of perseverance and defying the odds but lacks moments that get your pulse racing and make you want to stand up and cheer for June.

Major spoilers ahead!!

I really liked a few things about this book. The tie-ins to Jane Eyre were delightful and spare. The aunt getting rid of Jane/June was, well, kind of understandable after June burns most of the house down by experimenting. And, the brooding Mr. Rochester is on a planet, alone, and it's only after a fire in the night that you realize his role.

I loved how June is so believably interested in science. I loved the difference in the narration and her agency from when she is 12 to when she's an adult. She goes from narrating as some sort of alien examining human life to competently living her own.

There were a few things I didn't like. The book ends abruptly, maybe making room for a sequel. The love interest is rather monstrous, but less morally excusable than Mr. Rochester is. Because of this, it's not a romance. I had no hope of a happy ending in the usual sense. (Tbh I kind of wished the love interest would die off.) Perhaps this was intentional: the only way in which the book/series could have a happy ending is if June fixes her uncle's technology and saves the crew that's in jeopardy. That's pretty feminist, and maybe that's the point? June's looking for family and her accomplishments let her find it? Maybe.

For what it's worth, the lack of quotes didn't bother me. It wasn't simply that the author dropped them. It seems like she means to allow the narrator to paraphrase, and I thought that was a cool way to experience things from the narrator's perspective more than usual. We don't know what the other characters actually said, as we would if they were quoted. We only know June's interpretation.