Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper

1 review

courtneyfalling's review

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fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I really wanted to like this concept, but the execution felt flawed, especially because Cal was such an unlikeable main character for a YA romance. 

  • Cal was an absolutely terrible friend to Deb. Like. I've read some books this year where the main characters are shitty and self-centered "friends," but I genuinely think Cal might be the absolute worst friend so far this year. 
  • I had to start taking notes while reading about some of the plot lines and snuck-in details that didn't make sense.
    1. When Cal's Buzzfeed internship is first mentioned, I wrote, "Okay, I get that Cal is Internet famous, and turning out 80,000 of his 435,000 followers for a livestream is an impressively high stat. But I don't believe for a second that he's getting a Buzzfeed internship as a random high school kid. And 435,000 followers isn't enough for me to believe in a celebrity exception, either." This does get addressed a little in the next chapter: his internship would specifically involve making NYC-specific content, a market he's proven successful within, and it came about through his social media success. But I don't think a lot of authors who write about social media celebrity actually understand how little a number like 435,000 followers actually translates into real-world opportunities or power. It's a lot more than most people have, but there's still a little cadre of 435k+ accounts out and about, and the biggest market for them is with advertising and collaborations, usually not serious internships. And honestly by the end a lot of Cal's "collaborations" come off as patronizing attempts to capitalize off his celebrity at the trade-off of making him feel like a 'serious journalist' for a few minutes. He's always being used by some bigger media or communications team, and he's too naive to ever really register it. He's not 'objective,' he's a pawn. 2. During all the opening chapters to this book, I wanted to make a giant, neon "Divorce Him" sign and hold it up in front of Cal's mom. Her motivations for following her husband to Houston against her own wishes don't make sense. The relationship has been tense for a while now, and it makes more sense for her to stay in NYC with basically everything else in her life (her personality, her mental health, her career, her grief for her sister, her comfort and history in NYC, and her logistic needs like therapy access). Cal's dad is selfish and no one ever calls him out for acting like the massive bitch he is. 3. You're really telling me Cal, whose main personality trait is a steadfast journalistic ambition, doesn't know what AP is? Nope. Not buying it. 4. Why did Cal randomly list OU as a potential journalism school alongside NYU and Columbia? I can see in the author's blurb that he grew up around Dayton, and maybe he has a connection to OU, but it felt weird and straight-up removed me from the story. 5. No way NASA puts Grace, Mike, and Cal's dad on the same plane together, knowing they'd all play the same role in an Orpheus mission. Because if that plane crashes completely down, and they all die, NASA is left with nobody. This is a basic protocol thing the government actually follows.
  • The whole connection between Cal and Leon felt very insta-love. They magically know about each other from Leon's StarWatch role and press coverage and Cal's social media channel (lots to unpack about parasocial relationships), they're attracted to each other, and boom, it's been like two weeks but somehow they're in love. I liked Leon fine enough as a character but the relationship sped way too quickly without enough of a believable or strong foundation. 
  • I think the best part of this book, and what could've been played up more, is the criticism of what happens when you monetize a public program or give control over a program's design and coverage to a private entity that, ultimately, cares most about its own influence and profit. There was one point where I legitimately thought this book was going to veer towards 'unraveling a conspiracy,' in which StarWatch had caused some of the problems facing the Orpheus 20.
    Like tampering with the plane that Grace, Mike, and Cal's dad were on. Or setting up the satellite to explode.
    And I was almost hoping it would head in that direction, since it would've set Cal up to do some fun investigative and revelatory journalism plus make a pretty good critique of capitalism. Instead the book just paid lip service in a few select spots to liberal talking points ('we should spend more on healthcare and education than on elite scientists playing sandbox on Mars'... like yeah actually we should, you don't get to say that once then get forgiven, you have to actually make positive policy changes happen) without changing any of the fundamentally and simplistically pro-NASA and pro-USA messages at its core. Like it was frustrating to read as a socialist because I was like... sometimes you're so close to the point and sometimes you're literally further from the point than these astronauts are from Mars. 
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