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embreads98's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I have some complaints about this book.
1) sooo much Covid/2020 election talk. Way too soon for me, if I had known I wouldn’t have picked up this book.
2) white men probably shouldn’t write from the perspective of people of color. There’s a scene where a Black activist thinks about his white friend, a man who does the bare minimum to soothe his white guilt, and concludes that even the bare minimum is important in the face of all the hatred. That revelation felt like such a white perspective that I looked up the race of the author at that point. I would suggest the author read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” and rethink his stance on the value of the white moderate.
3) there were so. Many. Damn. Characters. Too many storylines to get invested in them all and it took way too long for them all to converge and then when they did it was barely a climax. The ending felt rushed and everything leading up to it felt unnecessarily complex.
Overall this book was a miss for me. I enjoy a story which examines humanity and our relationships to one another, but this one fell flat due to not having enough time with any one character. I didn’t connect to the cast and ultimately wasn’t invested in the outcome of their myriad storylines.
1) sooo much Covid/2020 election talk. Way too soon for me, if I had known I wouldn’t have picked up this book.
2) white men probably shouldn’t write from the perspective of people of color. There’s a scene where a Black activist thinks about his white friend, a man who does the bare minimum to soothe his white guilt, and concludes that even the bare minimum is important in the face of all the hatred. That revelation felt like such a white perspective that I looked up the race of the author at that point. I would suggest the author read MLK’s “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” and rethink his stance on the value of the white moderate.
3) there were so. Many. Damn. Characters. Too many storylines to get invested in them all and it took way too long for them all to converge and then when they did it was barely a climax. The ending felt rushed and everything leading up to it felt unnecessarily complex.
Overall this book was a miss for me. I enjoy a story which examines humanity and our relationships to one another, but this one fell flat due to not having enough time with any one character. I didn’t connect to the cast and ultimately wasn’t invested in the outcome of their myriad storylines.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, Gun violence, Blood, Drug abuse, and Mass/school shootings
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