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codename_cyan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
fangirl325's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
ggeniyy's review against another edition
3.5
блин че за. вроде начало норм, потом тягомотина. некоторые места типо че за.... нафига это было. потом вообще нифига не понимала, ну и читала тупо глазами. короче пока. у тебя такой был шедевр, почему решил перейти на мистику...
befsk's review against another edition
3.0
Here's some advice: don't undertake this book lightly like I did. Ah, it's Stephen Chbosky, I said to myself, but it looks like he wrote a thriller and not a young adult book. I'm down for that. Not realising it had 720 pages. Not realising it was a horror book and not a thriller. Not realising it was going to be the weirdest book I've read in a good long time.
I cannot emphasise enough how weird this book is. It's an incredibly odd start to a book with the nightmare and the child narrator being lured into the woods by a face in a cloud, and it never really gets less weird from there.
I can certainly see how people would struggle with it because it's a very slow book at times but for some reason I can't quite explain, I found it difficult to put down. I'm not fond of shifting the point of view through different characters at random and on a whim but I guess that's what some authors do with third person narration, and I grew used to it.
I liked the characters - I liked the mother, and I liked the sheriff, and I liked Ambrose, and I liked Christopher even though I usually don't like being stuck with a kid narrator. Although his obsession with the fictional cartoon Bad Cat started to grate on my nerves.
The problem was that I wasn't sure where the book was going, and I really wasn't sure what it wanted to be. I feel like this book was maybe an example of the editor being too scared of the author's name to do too much editing. It meandered a lot, and I was left unsure what the point of the whole thing was to be honest.
It suffered a little bit from odd pacing - I thought the book was heading towards a climax at the point just before Christopher and his mother were in a car crash, and was shocked to look down and see myself at around the 50% mark. Too many attempts at peaking the story left it so that the end - which was far too drawn out to be honest - didn't satisfy nearly as much as it should have. Through the last 5-10% I was just hoping it was wrap it up and end soon. The epilogue was a good cliffhanger that I genuinely hope never gets resolved because I really don't want a sequel to this book and also I think it's better left as it was.
A small aside is that I ended up reading the world's worst formatted ARC copy of this book. Words will become
massively spaced out
and then we'llgetawholesentenceortwothatrunsalltogetherlikethis. It's a very small complaint that hasn't affected my reading of the book as much as you'd expect. In fact, it made that opening prologue where Christopher is having a nightmare a fair bit scarier before I realised it was a formatting mistake.
I received this ARC through Netgalley.
I cannot emphasise enough how weird this book is. It's an incredibly odd start to a book with the nightmare and the child narrator being lured into the woods by a face in a cloud, and it never really gets less weird from there.
I can certainly see how people would struggle with it because it's a very slow book at times but for some reason I can't quite explain, I found it difficult to put down. I'm not fond of shifting the point of view through different characters at random and on a whim but I guess that's what some authors do with third person narration, and I grew used to it.
I liked the characters - I liked the mother, and I liked the sheriff, and I liked Ambrose, and I liked Christopher even though I usually don't like being stuck with a kid narrator. Although his obsession with the fictional cartoon Bad Cat started to grate on my nerves.
The problem was that I wasn't sure where the book was going, and I really wasn't sure what it wanted to be. I feel like this book was maybe an example of the editor being too scared of the author's name to do too much editing. It meandered a lot, and I was left unsure what the point of the whole thing was to be honest.
Spoiler
It was a big old good vs evil story in the end but there was no deep meaning to this, no overall lessons to be learnt or morals to be taught or insights to be gained. It was just what it was - a bunch of people fighting the devil, seeing some horrible shit and plowing through.It suffered a little bit from odd pacing - I thought the book was heading towards a climax at the point just before Christopher and his mother were in a car crash, and was shocked to look down and see myself at around the 50% mark. Too many attempts at peaking the story left it so that the end - which was far too drawn out to be honest - didn't satisfy nearly as much as it should have. Through the last 5-10% I was just hoping it was wrap it up and end soon. The epilogue was a good cliffhanger that I genuinely hope never gets resolved because I really don't want a sequel to this book and also I think it's better left as it was.
A small aside is that I ended up reading the world's worst formatted ARC copy of this book. Words will become
massively spaced out
and then we'llgetawholesentenceortwothatrunsalltogetherlikethis. It's a very small complaint that hasn't affected my reading of the book as much as you'd expect. In fact, it made that opening prologue where Christopher is having a nightmare a fair bit scarier before I realised it was a formatting mistake.
I received this ARC through Netgalley.
aleynakaterina's review against another edition
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Like many of the other reviewers I found this book to be very drawn out and long. I didn't start feeling this way until about 80% through the book; up until that point it felt almost justifiable because there was so many stories and characters to keep up on. Also you are heavily slapped in the face with ideology in the latter portion of the book and it was unexpected based upon the description.
lausbiana's review against another edition
4.0
Vaya, vaya. Alguien ha estado leyendo a Stephen King. No voy a comparar este libro con la obra prima de Chbosky, porque son totalmente diferentes. Me ha encantado, aunque a veces sí que podía resultar pesado y repetitivo, como dicen otras críticas. Eso sí, una cosa que no me ha gustado es que se refiera a Kate Reese como "la madre de Christopher" todo el rato, siendo probablemente de los personajes más importantes y poderosos de la obra.
ssdgm91's review against another edition
This book is sponsored by Aspirin and God because they're mentioned almost every page.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Child abuse, and Child death
Moderate: Abortion
Minor: Eating disorder
viegreifen's review against another edition
2.0
A few hundred pages too long. What started off as an ideal horror novel ended up being a religious sermon that threw all the build-up in the beginning into a roaring fire. It became boring, messy, repetitive, and some parts predictable in the last hundred pages. Massively disappointed with how it ended. I'll stick to its inspiration (Stephen King) instead.