Reviews

it’s hard because the concept of this is so great and i want to like it so badly but i really just think it’s not very good at all. i think the like 75% to 85% mark is beautiful. and the prologue and that’s all i can say.

the multiple POVs did not work at all, and often made it confusing who was who. i’m not sure if i fully understood the relations between all the families because, again, the split POVs. the ending felt unsatisfying but maybe the epilogue just should’ve been cut. but the ending lumberjack section was also weird so idk. i was disappointed by the weird execution of magical realism and how underwhelming it was. dialogue was great like 20% of the time and all other times it felt basic. like a lot of this just like. didn’t feel fresh. these people were just characters with backstories, not living and breathing in the events of the story.

naming your dog Basil is super funny tho i’ll give him that.

thepetitepunk's review against another edition

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3.0

I had really high hopes for This Town Sleeps but unfortunately it didn’t really meet my expectations. Our main character is Marion, whose point of view is in the first person. I did enjoy Marion as a character; however, there were other miscellaneous, sometimes disconnected, POVs scattered throughout the book that I didn’t understand the purpose of. Marion’s romantic interest has a POV in the second person and there are some POVs in the third person. I thought this was quite confusing and distracted from the central story. I also wish Marion and Shannon’s relationship was further explored—it just felt so shameful and secretive and angst...which I guess was the point, but I think it’s time to deviate from this narrative.

Other than that, I still thought that this book was enjoyable. Also, let me include a quote that stuck with me: ”You don’t look like a warrior. You look like a dried potato.”

seeceeread's review against another edition

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When crossing into the reservation where my mother lives, and any reservation, really, there's an interesting transformation: the land becomes a mix of feral beauty and man-made blight. On one side of the highway you can see nature at its finest, and on the other, humans at their worst.

Marion has returned to the small town where he grew up. He adopts a dog and starts a relationship with a closeted former classmate. And then he's visited by a revenant, a once-murdered teen who sometimes inhabits the ghostly body of a wolf. As he tries to figure out why this spirit trails him, he uncovers some dark connections.

Staples compellingly digs into reservation details: basketball as a symbol of social mobility, brotherhoods of young men labeled gangs, substance misuse, despair. We skip from a man riddled with shame at his sexuality to a weird encounter in a sweat lodge, and from an alcoholic mother who's just fallen out of sobriety to a young woman who's love never met their daughter. I think this is meant to be interconnected short stories, with various chapters narrated by different people. Perhaps it was the flat audio delivery that rendered too many characters in a similar voice, or maybe it was the similarity in perspective granted too many characters ... but this felt unpolished. I never felt invested in the plot, either; I kept waiting for the part that would bring everything together to hook me, but the jawbone family tale that's supposed to fill that space left me unimpressed.

bookwrm526's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

radikaliseradgroda's review against another edition

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3.0

The first 60% or so flew by but after that it really lost its way. It also could have really used some family trees to help keep track of all the POV characters.

aldomadour's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I enjoyed the main story, which is essentially what kept me reading. I did not enjoy the writing but appreciated the initiative of the author. It was a bold move to include so many points of view, but I ended up feeling distracted by this and felt it did not meaningfully contribute to the story, especially because we never spend much time with these additional characters. It is an interesting and a complex story but not necessarily an entertaining read.

starbits140's review

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dark mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

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