The Knife of Never Letting Go

I liked it enough to finish it but not enough to read the sequels.

Manchee you ruddy good dog.

This one reaches some emotional highs. - And I love Todd and Violas dynamic. But writing wise the book can feel quite lacking.

Interesting concept.

Maybe we should have gotten more of a deep dive into how the Prentisstown folk feel chosen by God cuss as it stands it's not really that believable they'd chase Todd in such a manner, or maybe I was imagining they had a more exiting reason.

Somewhat high 3 stars or low 3 and a half I'd say

Five stars for its kind. Young adult, what's right and wrong, enemies, great losses, young love. Very fast paced. Lots of action.

Now this was fun! I did not expect this to be sci-fi(ish) so it being revealed as one surprised me in the best of ways. I did enjoy the story even though it was a little ‘eh' at times. Todd was fantastic as a little bratty protagonist and Violet was the best.
There was some potential left wanting here. I still don't understand where Prentisstown got thousands of people but that's such a minor complaint.

The first time I read this, I was so insanely bored and I vowed to never read it again - spoiler alert! I did. COVID encouraged me to read all those books that were collecting dust on my shelf and I loved “A Monster Calls” so I decided to give this book another chance.

I guess it did the trick - I picked it up four years after I'd first read it, and I absolutely loved it! It is such an entertaining read! Todd and Viola are such wonderfully written characters, and the setting reminds me of “A Handmaid's Tale” by Margaret Atwood. I'm looking forward to reading the next book :)

Wow, this was a dark and sad book. It's fast paced and intense. It's hard to put down.

What an awesome book this was. It. Never. Stops. The only thing that bothered me was Aaron because I think it was the only unnecessarily prolonged part of the story.

It made me cry my eyes out at that certain part. I put down the book and did not read it for two nights.

Overall great book, even greater ending. I don't usually jump into the second book in a serie but man, I gotta keep reading this.

I listened to the audiobook of this one and I think maybe it's just not for me.

First of all, I don't much care for first person narratives.

But the worst part is that I felt like the author was deliberately withholding details so that he could artificially boost tension.

The WORST, though is the brutal murder of the talking dog, Manchee, who was the best character in the whole book.

I also don't understand how so many secrets were kept from a boy who was almost 13 years old – actually more than 14 years old – in a town where every man's thoughts are being broadcast for the world to hear. And it's a town that is plotting a major political coup. But, sure, that one boy is able to not find out about it.

Anyway. This book is just not my jam.

second read april 2021
ngl wasn't as fun the second time bc i already knew what happened - wish i could read this first the first time again! still loved the story tho & still 5 stars from me!

first read nov 2018
The first time I came across The Knife of Never Letting Go was on my younger sister's bookshelf. She has a collection of less than ten novels on her book and I wanted to read anything and everything at the beginning of my never-ending book binge. I saw this book had amazing reviews on Goodreads and those that I followed gave it a minimum of 4 stars. I read the synopsis and sigh it was a dystopian book.

See, I'm a realistic fiction kind of gal and I love a good romance and mystery book, but I hadn't really considered reading dystopia. During the Hunger Games craze of the early 2010's it seemed like everyone and their mother was writing a “super cool unique” dystopian book. I've read two that I remember in that time, those being Divergent by Veronica Roth and Delirium by Lauren Oliver, the first I thought was okay and the second I thought was kind of... bad. So, I was kind of turned off by the genere. Because The Knife of Never Letting Go had such good reviews and my little sister constantly telling me how AMAZING it was, I decided to finally start reading it.The first 40-50 pages were really hard for me to read. The reason I stick to realistic fiction is that I know the exact type of world they're in, but every dystopian society is different. I found all the introduction prose at the beginning boring and I almost stopped reading - until I got to page 55 and I COULDN'T stop. I loved the diction, I loved how unpredictable and tense the plot was, I loved Ness's word choice in the narration and how we had a faultless unreliable narrator. I also hated how much I loved the satisfyingly unsatisfying ending. I can't wait to read the next book in the series!!!!I also cried a lot while reading lmao: -Todd being forced to leave Cillian and Ben and him having no idea why-Todd hearing in Prentiss Jr's lying Noise about how he shot Cillian and Ben “twixt the eyes”-Todd and Viola floating down the river in boat while Aaron crushed Manchee to death-Todd and Viola finding Ben before finding Haven and Ben sacrifices himself to Prentiss Jr. so Todd and VIola can escapeJust such a good read :””””””(

This book was a struggle to finish. The more I think about this book, the more enraged I get. How did this win so many awards?!?!?!? The only award can give this book is the fact it has created a new shelf on goodreads for me - books I have purchased but won't read because the prequel was so terrible.

Things I liked:
Manchee!! - The most relatable and likable character of the whole book. It gets an extra star just because of Manchee.

Things I didn't like:
Basically everything else.
SpoilerAfter the death of Manchee, the dog, I really didn't care how the story ended. Manchee was the only thing going for this book and I enjoyed picking it up to just see how he would react to various situations. “Todd?!”.
Todd himself was incredibly predictable, boring, and unlikable. Oh no, a challenging situation, I better hesitate until somebody else helps me out.
Aaron was stupidly over powered. It was like the author had just watched the terminator and figured that having an indestructible robot was a good plot line to include in their own story; but, then forgot to make them into a robot.
I liked Viola but her flipping between helpless captive and keeping Todd in line became predictable. I would be tempted to read the next book just to see if she survives but she would have to otherwise Todd would curl up into a ball and cry himself to death for the remainder of the series.


Regrettably I bought the entire series on special. I guess the library is getting a brand new trilogy!

A fantastic reread of one of my favourite books from when I was younger. The world and concept of Prentisstown kept me captivated and turning the pages as quickly as I could.

Todd is the youngest boy in a town filled with only men. His world is overwhelmed with the noise of men???s thoughts which are projected into the air around them. When Todd is a month from his thirteenth birthday, on which he becomes a man, he discovers a patch of quiet in the swamp near his town. No thought can penetrate the quiet, and this discovery changes his perception of the world he knew.

The book was an excellent piece of teen fiction I can???t wait read the rest of the series as I never read past the first book in the series before.

I actually really liked this! I see it has very varied rating but I loved it. It did drag a bit at around 60% and I thought I was just going to read the wikipedia summary on the next two books but I am INVESTED. World building was very good.

Great fast-paced chase, I also adored the fact that information about New World gets revealed gradually, mantaining curiosity in the reader. I also liked the presence of interesting themes (the possibility of reading other people's thoughts, regimes, war, etc.). BUT there's a big “but”: I don't find Todd a believable character, not to mention the exagerated amount of unfortunate events he finds himself into, which sounded like an excuse to keep the reader hooked without mantaining credibility and coherence. Too many times Todd played dumb, too many times he was reluctant to take specific actions that anyone in his situations would have taken (I'm not specifing further in order to avoid spoilers). A character so unbelievable that shattered into pieces my suspension of disbelief.
However, to anyone reading this far in this review, keep in mind that the aforementioned flaws seems to be typical of the young adult genre, meaning that if you are accustomed to them and want to focus on the good parts, I encourage you to read it anyway. Overall it's an interesting read.

This was okay. I was invested, it's a great study of “make everything terrible and then make it worse” and upping stakes and there was definitely lots of effective tension and action throughout, not to mention the voice and premise are absolutely unique.

But IDK. As a trans person, I'm not really an enormous fan of stories whose entire premise relies on how different boys are from girls and vice versa. There were some things I certainly appreciated about this book, but the gender stuff kind of killed it for me. YMMV.

???We are the choices we make.???

Anyone I've talked to while reading this book has heard this already but I'm just going to say this again: after the whole Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched etc. times of dystopian trilogies I became... slightly allergic. It just felt like the arc of all of these books were becoming too predictable and it just made them really boring to me.

So starting this book I was kind of anticipating maybe getting that feeling too, and I know this is still only the first book so things might change and yada yada but, let me just say, that I was really really pleasantly surprised by the different kind of storytelling we get here.

It's not dystopian, exactly. It's kind of sci-fi because it's about a group of people going to a new planet because earth is full and also messed up and trying to build a new life there. So already, we start out not dealing with a controlling government but rather it's exploring what people do when there's no government, and it's about how they make sense of life and power.

Todd was really annoying at times but also like... he's fourteen. So I try to forgive him for being kind of dumb and making stupid decisions. I think Viola is really cool and I hope we're going to get to know more about her and the previous part of her life in the next book(s). Manchee is the freakin best I love animal companions.

Spoiler WHY CAN'T AARON JUST FUCKING DIE?????????????????????????? HE KEEPS SHOWING UP even after they tear his face off it's so ANNOYING. also when manchee died i lowkey died that was so sad.

Re-read (November 2020): This book is still so effing good. The part with Todd's mother's book makes me tear up everytime.

Overall I found this an easily digestable story (though it got emotionally compromising at times!) that is easy to get into and to follow. Then suddenly before you know it, you're caring for these characters.
The story is relatively simple, which was both a positive and a negative - I enjoyed the story a lot because it wasn't an overly complex one, but I did get tired of it when it was nearing the end because the way it all started to unfold wasn't overly interesting to me (anymore). Because of that, I'll likely not check out the rest of the trilogy.

I'm so torn...there were parts of this where I was like HELL YEAH, kick some ass babies!!! fight the system babies!!! But then other parts were really repetitive; I feel like this book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. Some really important themes covered here, but somehow they felt a little blatant yet glossed over at the same time. This is a great example of a YA book I probably would have loved more as an actual young adult.

It was okay

good story, why did the dog have to die?!

Despite taking a little while to really get into it I ultimately couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. But now that I've finished it I have to read the next book in the trilogy. Hopefully it will be just as good.

This was a highly original book. The concept of hearing people's thoughts all day...I dont know how the characters didnt go completly mad, well not all of them at least. I enjoyed watching Todd's evolution and the author's ability to show us what he was feeling without coming right out and labeling emotions. I also liked seeing the slow formation of friendship and the realization that not everything was as it seemed to Todd. That being said, I did have a few issues. My biggest would be the main antagonist's ability to live through circumstances that by all rights should have killed them. I understand this is a work of fiction and truth can be stretched, but it still has to be somewhat in the realm of possibility. My second issue was the language. Yes I understand that there is a new culture, and different ways to say or spell words, but don't actually change the written word, it disrupts the flow for the reader. I struggled with the creative spelling and written out accents for the first half of the book. I will move on and read the next book, the ending certainly leaves on a cliffhanger and I want to know what comes next.

I really wanted to like this book. And it was really good! Up until.... well i'm sure the people who have read this book will know what scene I'm talking about. It was the single most horrible scene in a novel I have EVER read. It destroyed me. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER: Manchee's death scene. Omg. I can hear about people being tortured and hurt or dying and its horrible and I cry but I can get over it. If an animal suffers like that I can't handle it. I refuse to finish this book because it hurt me so badly. I seriously cried for an hour. Anyway, this was my choice for family bookclub. No one else wanted to go through that part so we're all putting the book down and won't be finishing it. Not only was it the death of the animal it was HOW Manchee died. I just can't even....

UPDATE: Re-read on April 2, 2024 !!!
4.5/5
I devoured this book when I was 18, and I remember it left a lingering, fuzzy impression on me. Fast forward a decade later, and with a newfound appreciation for the finer points of dystopian fiction (and a slightly sturdier wallet lol), I decided to revisit this series, hoping I could also finish the last two books once and for all. Let's just say... it hit different.

This time around, armed with an adult perspective, the novel's depth became startlingly clear. Marketed as a young adult book, “The Knife of Never Letting Go” tackles some brutally complex themes. The constant barrage of exposed thoughts, the suffocating structure of New World-ian society, and the fight for individuality – these are experiences that resonate far more powerfully with a seasoned reader.

Ness crafts wonderfully endearing characters with the likes of Viola Eadem Todd Hewitt and his loyal dog, Manchee (NOOOOO!!!!). On the flip side, the antagonists are chillingly effective – you can practically feel the EVIL radiating off the pages. The narrative also throws plenty of thought-provoking quotes your way, making you ponder the nature of society and oppression.

Honestly, “The Knife of Never Letting Go” is one of the best YA dystopian novels I've ever encountered. Re-reading it even strengthens that point. It's a shame the movie adaptation flopped because of how inaccurate and stupid it was. The world Ness created is begging to be brought to life on screen for a second chance, and I'd like to see this being adapted into a TV series. And that ending, though? How could you leave us with that! internal screaming

Off to the second book! My 18-year old self would be very proud.




ACTUAL RATING: 4.3 (Reviewed in April 21, 2014)[WARNING: This review may contain spoilers. So read at your own risk!]The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick is one of the most intriguing novels I have ever read. But I couldn't really find myself committed nor engaged during the first few chapters.Ness wrote this book in the perspectives/POVs of our young protagonist, Todd Hewitt. He's about to become a man at the age of 13 in about a month (according to Prentisstown's laws). Education isn't really essential in the story's setting, which is conveyed by the writer's grammatical and typographical errors. His companion, Manchee was also an important character in the story. Being there to guide and save Todd during times of conflicts and despair. I almost wept when he got killed, it was too damn soon in my own opinion. As for Viola, I don't have any complaints regarding with her character. She has a very mysterious personality which I really liked about, and hey! She saved our main character several times. Aaron's character, on the other hand, felt very bleak although I adored his bravery just to get killed (yeah you heard me right) by Todd (you'll learn why this is an important mission for him once you read the story). But unfortunately, he was killed by someone else and I wouldn't spoil who it was.The idea of the “Noise” also amazed me in so many ways. It's really unique and felt very original. It can be confusing at times but you'll quickly get the hang of it once you arrive at Part II. There are also terms/slangs that are written in this book but I won't compare it to The Maze Runner because it's very clear that this book came out first.I recommend this to people who are very patient when it comes to reading. It was really slow at first but it started to catch pace as soon as the intense parts came, like the author was already rushing through to finishing this book. It's really hard to put down and you'll finish it in no time ;)

Goodreads recommended this for me. So I had no idea what to expect, other than a YA series. And boy what an effin adventure. At first I really disliked the writing style and the narrative voice. But the more I read, the more it grew on me. I really appreciated it later, because it gives you that last grain of salt that makes the world much more alive. As soon as Ness included a bit of scifi I was hooked. The characters grew so well that my heart nearly broke at some twists. The story stays interesting and tense until the heartbreaking and crazy abrupt ending. And after seeing that the other two books are even better rated, I can't wait to continue the adventure!