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magyklyxdelish's review against another edition
2.0
An uncle takes the fall for a “crime” he didn’t commit, which was really just an accident that came from 2 kids (one of them his nephew) messing around. Essentially this story is at its core about the consequences of our actions.
While I appreciated the story he was trying to tell, this fell incredibly flat for me. When it comes to stories told in unique ways, one of my favorites is multiple perspectives. However this book is constantly changing perspectives with no warning and it’s too many people. I mean at one point he shared the story from the perspective of a random office worker who was in no way important to the story. It wasn’t super hard for me to follow, but I could easily see how others might get confused by this. For me, it just left me frustrated how often it was changing, and how many people he felt needed to share their point of view.
This story is also told through short “scenes” if you will. I don’t really know how best to describe that, but while telling this story this way did make the pacing go a bit faster, it left the story feeling altogether disjointed. On the other hand, if this story had been told normally with a continuous and point a to point b timeline, I probably would have been bored.
Overall I can appreciate what he was trying to say, but the way this was told, for me anyway, came off as pretentious and disjointed.
2 ⭐️
While I appreciated the story he was trying to tell, this fell incredibly flat for me. When it comes to stories told in unique ways, one of my favorites is multiple perspectives. However this book is constantly changing perspectives with no warning and it’s too many people. I mean at one point he shared the story from the perspective of a random office worker who was in no way important to the story. It wasn’t super hard for me to follow, but I could easily see how others might get confused by this. For me, it just left me frustrated how often it was changing, and how many people he felt needed to share their point of view.
This story is also told through short “scenes” if you will. I don’t really know how best to describe that, but while telling this story this way did make the pacing go a bit faster, it left the story feeling altogether disjointed. On the other hand, if this story had been told normally with a continuous and point a to point b timeline, I probably would have been bored.
Overall I can appreciate what he was trying to say, but the way this was told, for me anyway, came off as pretentious and disjointed.
2 ⭐️
cpa85's review against another edition
3.0
The pacing of the novel, a collection of vignettes and scenes spread across long time jumps, is an intriguing way to move the story along but I can't help but feel a little more time with the characters would have made it more satisfying and enjoyable in the end. Still, it's an artfully-written story about a group of sympathetic characters I'm glad to have encountered.
samhouston's review
4.0
The man they called "Shoe" was in way over his head. Having been chosen from a group of immigrant day workers standing around a mall parking lot, he showed up at the construction site without the steel-toed boots he needed to protect himself. Now, he was so deep inside a slippery, muddy trench that he could barely make his way back to solid ground after the foreman grew frustrated with his work. Instead of helping him, the rest of the crew laughed at Shoe's efforts to get out of the hole he stood in. But Shoe was used to it. That was pretty much the story of his life.
Jon Pineda's Apology is the story of a simple man with a tragic childhood who is still hoping to make a better life for himself in the United States. For someone who started life the way Shoe did, that should not be all that difficult, but all these years later he is still struggling to find his place in his new country. He is grateful that his brother has taken him for the moment, but he knows he is in the way and that his sister-in-law will be happy to see him go. Shoe will miss his brother and his nephew Mario - even his sister-in-law - but he understands why she feels that way.
Things will change sooner than any of them expect.
Tom and Teagan, nine-year-old twins, are part of Mario's neighborhood crowd. After Teagan suffers a devastating brain injury that forever traps her inside her childhood, she is unable to tell investigators what happened. The few clues available to investigators, however, all point toward Shoe, and rather than admit to police that his young nephew was somehow involved in the incident, Shoe chooses silence – and a long prison term. Scarred by his own childhood, he wants to make sure that Mario gets off to a better start than he managed for himself.
Apology, because it uses a rapid-fire series of scenes and flashbacks to tell Shoe's story, has a cinematic feel that makes a vivid impression on the reader. This debut novel is filled with the kind of questions that do not have black or white answers. Readers will have to decide for themselves if Shoe's decision to sacrifice his own future on his nephew's behalf was the right one - or whether it was even necessary. Did it really change anything for Mario? Was it, perhaps, the only thing Shoe could have ever done to transform his own life into a success story? Was it worth it?
Bottom line: Jon Pineda packs a lot into what is a relatively short debut novel. Apology might be a tragedy, but it is likely leave the reader feeling a little better about the human condition.
Jon Pineda's Apology is the story of a simple man with a tragic childhood who is still hoping to make a better life for himself in the United States. For someone who started life the way Shoe did, that should not be all that difficult, but all these years later he is still struggling to find his place in his new country. He is grateful that his brother has taken him for the moment, but he knows he is in the way and that his sister-in-law will be happy to see him go. Shoe will miss his brother and his nephew Mario - even his sister-in-law - but he understands why she feels that way.
Things will change sooner than any of them expect.
Tom and Teagan, nine-year-old twins, are part of Mario's neighborhood crowd. After Teagan suffers a devastating brain injury that forever traps her inside her childhood, she is unable to tell investigators what happened. The few clues available to investigators, however, all point toward Shoe, and rather than admit to police that his young nephew was somehow involved in the incident, Shoe chooses silence – and a long prison term. Scarred by his own childhood, he wants to make sure that Mario gets off to a better start than he managed for himself.
Apology, because it uses a rapid-fire series of scenes and flashbacks to tell Shoe's story, has a cinematic feel that makes a vivid impression on the reader. This debut novel is filled with the kind of questions that do not have black or white answers. Readers will have to decide for themselves if Shoe's decision to sacrifice his own future on his nephew's behalf was the right one - or whether it was even necessary. Did it really change anything for Mario? Was it, perhaps, the only thing Shoe could have ever done to transform his own life into a success story? Was it worth it?
Bottom line: Jon Pineda packs a lot into what is a relatively short debut novel. Apology might be a tragedy, but it is likely leave the reader feeling a little better about the human condition.
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