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A review by queien
The Big Rewind by Libby Cudmore
2.0
My feelings about his book are all over the place... I had a huge, conflicting love-have relationship with the first 2/3 of the book, and then for the last third, I started leaning more toward "hate" but felt too invested in seeing the end to put it down and give up on it.
The good:
The writing is really solid, and the plot is engaging. The pacing is perfect. The music references are such that the reader doesn't need to know the song to understand what is being expressed. There's a lot of great representation in this book, with characters being incredibly diverse. The end message of letting the past stay in the past was nice. If the author has any books that aren't mysteries or romances, I'd read them because her writing style is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in a book.
The bad:
There's a lot of repetition. Some of it's obvious, like how Jett mentions three times in the first four pages that she's subletting her grandmother's apartment. Sometimes it's less obvious, like how a ton of different characters over the span of several chapters talk about how they're positive Bronco didn't do anything.
There are a ton of contradictions. Jett says she hardly knew KitKat and Bronco, but then, a couple chapters later, she switches it up and describes them as her friends. She makes it sound like she hates hipsters, but all her friends are hipsters and she even seems to describe herself as a hipster at one point. She asks all her friends "hey, do you know anyone with the initials GPL?" but then in a later chapter says "I hadn't asked anyone about GPL because I didn't want to show my hand." She describes herself as a feminist but then slut shames a stripper.
The book uses some of my least favorite tropes to drive the plot. One of them, "character can never say what they mean," is the narrator's main flaw, and it was so frustrating for me... The other one that stood out to me was the "girl just needs to get laid to feel better" cliche.
One thing that's been nagging at the back of my mind is "why couldn't they rewind the tape and listen to it again?" The reason the book states is because the rewind button is broken, but...couldn't you just listen to the A side for a couple minutes and then flip it to the B side again and be right about at the beginning of the last song? On top of that, what did it add to the plot that Jett could only hear the song once? Why couldn't she listen to it a couple times? I don't know why I'm so hung up on this one scene...
The romance was more a soap opera/drama, and I'm just not fond of that sort of story.
There were a lot of other things, but I'm having trouble putting them into words. In the end, the writing was great, but the story itself was not for me, and other things (like the repetition and contradiction issues) made it harder for me to enjoy what parts of the plot I did like.
The good:
The writing is really solid, and the plot is engaging. The pacing is perfect. The music references are such that the reader doesn't need to know the song to understand what is being expressed. There's a lot of great representation in this book, with characters being incredibly diverse. The end message of letting the past stay in the past was nice. If the author has any books that aren't mysteries or romances, I'd read them because her writing style is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for in a book.
The bad:
There's a lot of repetition. Some of it's obvious, like how Jett mentions three times in the first four pages that she's subletting her grandmother's apartment. Sometimes it's less obvious, like how a ton of different characters over the span of several chapters talk about how they're positive Bronco didn't do anything.
There are a ton of contradictions. Jett says she hardly knew KitKat and Bronco, but then, a couple chapters later, she switches it up and describes them as her friends. She makes it sound like she hates hipsters, but all her friends are hipsters and she even seems to describe herself as a hipster at one point. She asks all her friends "hey, do you know anyone with the initials GPL?" but then in a later chapter says "I hadn't asked anyone about GPL because I didn't want to show my hand." She describes herself as a feminist but then slut shames a stripper.
Spoiler
Yeah, the stripper turned out to be a bad guy, but that's still not an excuse to slut shame someone. There were so many other things about that character other than her profession that Jett could've pulled her insults from.Spoiler
When Sid was first introduced, there was no hint that Jett was crushing on him. It was only after Sid started falling for someone else that her emotions started coming through, and the way it was set up, it felt less like "I'm losing the love of my life!" and more "I'm losing my free meal ticket!" And then her love for Sid was further brought into question for me when Jett finally got Sid to herself and she IMMEDIATELY tried to run off with one of her exes.The book uses some of my least favorite tropes to drive the plot. One of them, "character can never say what they mean," is the narrator's main flaw, and it was so frustrating for me... The other one that stood out to me was the "girl just needs to get laid to feel better" cliche.
One thing that's been nagging at the back of my mind is "why couldn't they rewind the tape and listen to it again?" The reason the book states is because the rewind button is broken, but...couldn't you just listen to the A side for a couple minutes and then flip it to the B side again and be right about at the beginning of the last song? On top of that, what did it add to the plot that Jett could only hear the song once? Why couldn't she listen to it a couple times? I don't know why I'm so hung up on this one scene...
The romance was more a soap opera/drama, and I'm just not fond of that sort of story.
There were a lot of other things, but I'm having trouble putting them into words. In the end, the writing was great, but the story itself was not for me, and other things (like the repetition and contradiction issues) made it harder for me to enjoy what parts of the plot I did like.