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somarostam's review against another edition
3.0
I cannot describe this book. it was so confusing that I don't even know what genre it is. One word comes to my mind. WEIRD. This book was just plain weird. A lot of strange things and an even stranger plot.
What's even stranger is that I don't know the name of the main character in the book. The one who talks in first person. The one that the whole story is about. The author NEVER mentioned the name, so I will go with the initial "A". A and Aurora have been friends since forever. They did everything together, but everything changes when they meet Jack, the mysterious musician, and the guy with the completely-dark eyes.
The first problem I had with this book was that I didn't know if it was paranormal, contemporary, or a mix of both? It irked me that I didn't know anything about the book's genre. So, I didn't know what to expect from the book when I kept reading. The second thing is the characters. None of them ever clicked with me. None. Not A, Aurora, Jack, Cass, Maia. I couldn't connect to any of them and that made me sad.
The plot was, simply put, confusing. I didn't know what was happening well I was reading. I didn't get where they were, what they were doing, or who they really were. It got on my nerves a LOT, and I passed a lot of paragraphs unread, just because I couldn't get them. I didn't want to get them. There is one good thing about this book. It's the writing. Sarah McCarry's writing style is phenomenal, every single sentence she weaved was like silk, so smooth and pretty. I made tons of quotes in my copy, but I think that the author tried SO HARD with the writing, that she didn't give enough of her time to the plot or the characters.
I won't be recommending this. And I definitely won't read it again. I am not saying this book was all bad, it had its ups and downs. And the end was pretty amazing. But, here are some quotes for you, so you can judge for yourself whether you'll give it a go or not:
----
Music turns us inside
out with hunger, the need to hurt ourselves, get drunk, fuck, punch strangers, the need to take off all our clothes and run around in the grass screaming, the need get in a car and drive off in the middle of the night with a pack of strangers. We let the music shake us loose from the moorings of our bodies and hearts and brains, until we are nothing but sex and sweat and fists and hot hot light
---
Do you know what it’s like to be a girl pieced together out of appetite and impulse? We do. In that place of heat and noise I forget everything, forget being poor and being cared, forget the looming misery of school and the adult world, forget walls and masks and pretense.
---
A single note, faint and sweet, travels all the way from the stars to fall lightly to earth, and then another, scattering soft as rain. His music is like nothing I have ever heard. It is like the ocean surging, the wind that blows across the open water, the far call of gulls. It catches at my hair, moves across my skin and into my mouth and under my tongue. I can feel it running all through me.
---
I want to do everything, everything, everything, but I leave my hand in his and tamp all that desire into a hot coal at the center of my chest.
---
Kissing him is like falling into a river, some great fierce current carrying me outside of my body, and all around us the music of the water rises and rises, and I can hear the wind moving over the sand, the distant singing of the stars veiled behind their curtain of blue sky, the slow, resonant chords of the earth turning on its axis.
---
You think that the world we live in is ordinary. We make noise and static to fill the empty spaces
where ghosts live. We let other people grow our food, bleach our clothes. We seal ourselves in,
clean the dirt from our skins, eat of animals whose blood does not stain our hands. We long ago left
the ways of our ancestors, oracles and blood sacrifice, traffic with the spirit world, listening for the
voices out of stones and trees. But maybe sometimes you have felt the uncanny, alone at night in a dark wood, or waiting by the edge of the ocean for the tide to come in. We have paved over the ancient world, but that does not mean we have erased it.
---
I’m a chalkboard that’s been erased over and over again until there’s nothing left but a haze of white dust. Before this I never understood how long an hour could take, how many ticks of the second hand are in a minute, how endless the space between seconds can be.
---
marpesea's review against another edition
3.0
Dreamy and heartbreaking, feels reminiscent of books by Francesca Lia Block.
slightly_devious's review against another edition
1.0
Not for me. I couldn't even finish, I cated so little. Not going to continue w/the next one.
storytimed's review against another edition
3.0
Beautiful prose, ultimately unsatisfying. The casual diversity of book 3 (which I loved so much more) felt forced and performative here, and the dreamlike stream of consciousness prose turned into a frustrating refusal for anyone to explain anything ever. Also has a noxious message of "learning to let people go" aka never holding them accountable for their actions or having a conversation or attempting to maintain a relationship with someone even if your lives go down separate paths! McCarry fixed the problems of book 1 later in the series, but reading it still makes me want to skip book 2.
kellylynnthomas's review against another edition
5.0
All Our Pretty Songs is an accurate portrayal of what it's like to be a teenager. It's urban fantasy full of danger, mystery, and music. The prose is strikingly beautiful. And the ending is perfect yet unexpected. I highly recommend.
liralen's review against another edition
5.0
Judging by other reviews, this is largely a love-it-or-hate-it book. It's not hard to see why -- the stream-of-consciousness-like narration, the nameless protagonist, the quiet shift into the paranormal and surreal.
To be honest, the only thing that really bothered me is that this turned out to be not a standalone but the first installment in a trilogy. I like it when things don't end tidily for the characters. I like it when love is not the be all and end all, when characters make mistakes and do things that render them less likable, when they accept -- and like -- themselves as they are but also wish things were different.
How badly I want to save her and how badly I want to be her, beautiful and doomed in a pretty dress. How badly I want someone else to do the saving for once. (page 137)
These are not perfect characters. They fall prey to insta-love and immediate gratification; they are not always fair; they are not necessarily people you would want to trust. They're also a lot more interesting that way.
There's a much higher level of acceptance of the supernatural here than one might ordinarily see, and while that's not fully explained, it adds to the sort of...floaty...tone of the book.
But as for the trilogy: why? I mean, I'll read the second book (and probably the third), and hopefully the writing will be as dreamily purple (not normally a compliment, but I'll make an exception) as it is here -- but whether continuing the story will be an improvement over this appealingly messy ending remains to be seen.
This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think. You'll see. (page 2)
To be honest, the only thing that really bothered me is that this turned out to be not a standalone but the first installment in a trilogy. I like it when things don't end tidily for the characters. I like it when love is not the be all and end all, when characters make mistakes and do things that render them less likable, when they accept -- and like -- themselves as they are but also wish things were different.
How badly I want to save her and how badly I want to be her, beautiful and doomed in a pretty dress. How badly I want someone else to do the saving for once. (page 137)
These are not perfect characters. They fall prey to insta-love and immediate gratification; they are not always fair; they are not necessarily people you would want to trust. They're also a lot more interesting that way.
There's a much higher level of acceptance of the supernatural here than one might ordinarily see, and while that's not fully explained, it adds to the sort of...floaty...tone of the book.
But as for the trilogy: why? I mean, I'll read the second book (and probably the third), and hopefully the writing will be as dreamily purple (not normally a compliment, but I'll make an exception) as it is here -- but whether continuing the story will be an improvement over this appealingly messy ending remains to be seen.
This is a story about love, but not the kind of love you think. You'll see. (page 2)
futurememory's review against another edition
4.0
Phew, first book I've read after an extremely long hiatus, and I wasn't unhappy with this one.
I think fans of Francesca Lia Block would love this novel. It's short, poetic, raw, unflinching, dreamy, surreal, and intensely focused on female love and relationships. There's not much to All Our Pretty Songs - the bones of the story are a fairly standard take on Greek mythology. The plot isn't reinventing the wheel.
It's what it does with that story that elevates it. McCarry explores the blurry lines of female friendship and sexuality. Her characters are off the rails, stubborn, electric. It's a coming-of-age novel in the best way possible, and our main character learns to grow and accept who she is, and pivot from what she thought she was. All Our Pretty Songs doesn't flinch. It sees the punches coming, and accepts them. Pretty brave, especially for a YA novel.
It's definitely a bit wordy and overwrought at times, and these types of punk/music/teen type stories aren't exactly my favorite, but the Greek myth touches were pretty great, and the writing held it all together.
I think fans of Francesca Lia Block would love this novel. It's short, poetic, raw, unflinching, dreamy, surreal, and intensely focused on female love and relationships. There's not much to All Our Pretty Songs - the bones of the story are a fairly standard take on Greek mythology. The plot isn't reinventing the wheel.
It's what it does with that story that elevates it. McCarry explores the blurry lines of female friendship and sexuality. Her characters are off the rails, stubborn, electric. It's a coming-of-age novel in the best way possible, and our main character learns to grow and accept who she is, and pivot from what she thought she was. All Our Pretty Songs doesn't flinch. It sees the punches coming, and accepts them. Pretty brave, especially for a YA novel.
It's definitely a bit wordy and overwrought at times, and these types of punk/music/teen type stories aren't exactly my favorite, but the Greek myth touches were pretty great, and the writing held it all together.
superdilettante's review against another edition
4.0
This was, essentially, the same story as About A Girl, but I enjoyed it all the same. I’m a total sucker for the set-dressing in stories like this, from the jarred herbs to the descriptions of teenage bedrooms, to the ruby-red jewels draped around someone’s neck, to the bone forest.
librarypatronus's review against another edition
1.0
This was just not for me. I found the language obnoxious and boring and kept catching myself reading the same paragraphs over - DNF at only like 30 pages 😭 I may try again another time and see if it was my head space but I just wasn’t enjoying it at all