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A review by upbeatmetaphor
The Leaping by Tom Fletcher
5.0
I stuck this book in my "Surprises" shelf because it really gripped me much more than I was expecting. Seriously. I read it on my brother's wedding holiday, so it wasn't like I had other things to do.
The title is a little silly on first impression, but the book really delivers. There's a certain depth to the prose that really gets inside character heads without being too muddied and introspective. It's thoughts and feelings, not naval-gazing.
A living, believable city (Manchester, I'd recognise it anywhere) and friendship group is wonderfully created, and the supernatural sits alongside the mundane in a way that at no point is cliche or too fantastical, but also never feels too commonplace.
Some of the characters are quite loathsome and irritable, but at no point are their actions or motivations out of line with how they’re presented. I hated them for who they were, not for how they’d been written.
The book really represents the fantastic hot-blooded feeling of “running with the wolf” that is essential to this genre/narrative. Seriously, this book gripped me way more than I was expecting- I read it hip-deep in Mediterranean swimming pools with an outside temperature permanently over 30°C, but I was still drawn into the dark and bleak world of rural northern England, terrified of the darkness inside and the darkness just around the corner.
Nick
xx
The title is a little silly on first impression, but the book really delivers. There's a certain depth to the prose that really gets inside character heads without being too muddied and introspective. It's thoughts and feelings, not naval-gazing.
A living, believable city (Manchester, I'd recognise it anywhere) and friendship group is wonderfully created, and the supernatural sits alongside the mundane in a way that at no point is cliche or too fantastical, but also never feels too commonplace.
Some of the characters are quite loathsome and irritable, but at no point are their actions or motivations out of line with how they’re presented. I hated them for who they were, not for how they’d been written.
The book really represents the fantastic hot-blooded feeling of “running with the wolf” that is essential to this genre/narrative. Seriously, this book gripped me way more than I was expecting- I read it hip-deep in Mediterranean swimming pools with an outside temperature permanently over 30°C, but I was still drawn into the dark and bleak world of rural northern England, terrified of the darkness inside and the darkness just around the corner.
Nick
xx