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3.14 AVERAGE
3.14 AVERAGE
I need to re-read the ending. I was riding my bike and was too frustrated by the 3 mile hill-climb at the end of the ride/book to pay attention. It was gripping, however!
Angsty artist high school girl secretly loves misunderstood outcast neighbor boy. Their love is secret to all but them. Woven time-strands of "before" from Janie's perspective and "after" from a confused slightly amnesiac Micahs view. Janie's demented fairytales begin every chapter. Midwestern teenage love story. Quick read but trite.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
There were moments in this book where the writing was so poetic and tragic and beautiful. The story was slow, however, and it was almost a chore to get through.
I disliked Janie so much that I disliked the entire book.
i didn't expect myself to actually love this. and i guess that's the reason why i also ended up giving this four stars and loving it--the low expectation.
i like the mystery and its slow unraveling, the back-and-forth of Janie's and Micah's POVs, the writing (ohgosh, i really like Amy Zhang's writing!!), how the events simply fits perfectly into a domino effect. i like the friendship and romance of Janie and Micah. i hate Janie being a bitch though. lol. also the ending was a bit anti climactic. it's like: here's the ending. done. no feelings. thank you. go read your next book.
BUT as a whole, i really enjoyed this and i definitely would love to read more books by Amy Zhang :)
~full review soon!!
i like the mystery and its slow unraveling, the back-and-forth of Janie's and Micah's POVs, the writing (ohgosh, i really like Amy Zhang's writing!!), how the events simply fits perfectly into a domino effect. i like the friendship and romance of Janie and Micah. i hate Janie being a bitch though. lol. also the ending was a bit anti climactic. it's like: here's the ending. done. no feelings. thank you. go read your next book.
BUT as a whole, i really enjoyed this and i definitely would love to read more books by Amy Zhang :)
~full review soon!!
Okay, it's been a few days, I've thought a lot about it, and I think I know what I want to say about this book now.
Before I get started, I want to say that I would be wary recommending it on a content basis. There is a lot of potentially triggering content in this book: rape and suicide and emotional abuse. It would probably be a good book to recommend for people who, like, really enjoyed "We Were Liars." BUT I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without having a content conversation.
Okay. So, here's my review, but as a fair warning, it gets a little spoiler-y.
First, here's what I liked:
I thought the writing was really strong. I liked Micah's narrative voice. I thought the structure and premise were both interesting. I /sometimes/ liked Janie's narrative voice, but she would occasionally get a little bit...overly philosophical and metaphoric in a way that made her seem a little bit pretentious. I thought the author did a good job of creating main characters who were not all one thing–all good or all bad.
Here's what I disliked (I'm going to spoil...a lot from here on out...):
Janie was mean and manipulative and treated her best friend really poorly for the entire duration of their friendship. She was jealous of anyone who liked him, but didn't want to be with him (yet, anyway). She didn't want anyone at school to know that they were friends. She was constantly using him and preventing him from doing things that he needed or wanted to do. She wouldn't open up to him about her plans, but she insisted on dragging him along with her, even if that puts his future at risk.
His one push back, the moment when he finally says, "I can't do this anymore/I don't want to do this anymore" involves him ignoring her trauma and is the last exchange they have before she commits suicide. It was infuriating and, I felt, unfair to the character. Rather than being a moment where he got to stand up for himself and say, "no this treatment of me is unfair" it became (is later presented as...) the moment when he was a shitty friend.
The friendship was dysfunctional, and it was, thankfully, labeled as such throughout the book. I don't know that it's an "enjoyable" read but I do think that it could make for really good conversation.
Before I get started, I want to say that I would be wary recommending it on a content basis. There is a lot of potentially triggering content in this book: rape and suicide and emotional abuse. It would probably be a good book to recommend for people who, like, really enjoyed "We Were Liars." BUT I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without having a content conversation.
Okay. So, here's my review, but as a fair warning, it gets a little spoiler-y.
First, here's what I liked:
I thought the writing was really strong. I liked Micah's narrative voice. I thought the structure and premise were both interesting. I /sometimes/ liked Janie's narrative voice, but she would occasionally get a little bit...overly philosophical and metaphoric in a way that made her seem a little bit pretentious. I thought the author did a good job of creating main characters who were not all one thing–all good or all bad.
Here's what I disliked (I'm going to spoil...a lot from here on out...):
Janie was mean and manipulative and treated her best friend really poorly for the entire duration of their friendship. She was jealous of anyone who liked him, but didn't want to be with him (yet, anyway). She didn't want anyone at school to know that they were friends. She was constantly using him and preventing him from doing things that he needed or wanted to do. She wouldn't open up to him about her plans, but she insisted on dragging him along with her, even if that puts his future at risk.
His one push back, the moment when he finally says, "I can't do this anymore/I don't want to do this anymore" involves him ignoring her trauma and is the last exchange they have before she commits suicide. It was infuriating and, I felt, unfair to the character. Rather than being a moment where he got to stand up for himself and say, "no this treatment of me is unfair" it became (is later presented as...) the moment when he was a shitty friend.
The friendship was dysfunctional, and it was, thankfully, labeled as such throughout the book. I don't know that it's an "enjoyable" read but I do think that it could make for really good conversation.
Ummm.
This book is basically the lovechild of Paper Towns by John Green and We We Liars by E. Lockhart except it's exponentially more pretentious and has a total of zero likable characters.
This may be somewhat spoilery so I'll mark it as such to be safe but I really need to emphasize how blindsidingly triggering this book was for. And listen... it was not written as carefully as it should have been. I could see some messages Amy Zhang was trying to convey and many of them were things I agreed with. But the heavy stuff in this book was teetering so close to just existing for shock value that I couldn't support it.
This was basically how I felt about almost every aspect of the book...I could see a glimpse of something positive...I would really WANT to like it.... but I couldn't. It just wasn't quite there.
This book is basically the lovechild of Paper Towns by John Green and We We Liars by E. Lockhart except it's exponentially more pretentious and has a total of zero likable characters.
This may be somewhat spoilery so I'll mark it as such to be safe but I really need to emphasize how blindsidingly triggering this book was for
Spoiler
rape and suicideThis was basically how I felt about almost every aspect of the book...I could see a glimpse of something positive...I would really WANT to like it.... but I couldn't. It just wasn't quite there.
Trigger warning for rape.
I initially selected this book as one of my 2016 new releases to read because the initial blurb I got for the book suggested a different story than what I got. Instead I got a story that revolved around what I would consider a toxic friendship, a confusing narrative, and a rather abrupt ending.
The story is told in alternating points of view, Micah and Janie or Janie and Micah. Seriously, be prepared to read that phrase a lot in this book. Janie's chapters are the "Before" points of view and Micah's chapters are the "After" points of view. We don't know what exactly what event was before and after, but we get a sense of it earlier on when we initially get to Micah's chapter. We also get journal entries from Janie that provide a look at the twisted fairy tale that she saw her life being.
What to say about Janie. I really wish that I could like her. But honestly, I didn't. You come to find out slowly that though she sees Micah as being her soul mate (blech) and that she knows she is destined to be with him forever, she still dates and has crushes on other guys. Now, I am not saying that is wrong, but it is wrong to lead someone on and or have them have to suck it up while you are out exploring yourself. However, even that would not have made me dislike her if it wasn't for the fact that you start to find out that no one but one other person has any idea that Micah and Janie are friends.
Yes. Can you imagine? You are supposedly some other person's best friend, but shh no one can know because if people realize that she is friends with such a loner it can mean that her popularity will take a hit.
During these revelations I started having less sympathy for Micah, because he knows what Janie is doing and he keeps going along with it. Starting in middle school she stopped acknowledging him in public and has become one of the popular people in their high school.
Janie even acknowledges it isn't fair, but she doesn't care because you are quick to find out that she is self centered and selfish (example, she hates that Micah hangs out with his friend Dewey and she dislikes it when she notices that other girls find Micah attractive) and never gets called out on what she's doing by other people except for Micah once in a while.
Micah in all of his chapters seems broken. Without Janie around he doesn't seem to know what else he is good for besides drinking and playing video games. I honestly started to hate Micah's chapters towards the end because the chapters started to feel so melodramatic and honestly the final reveal was a joke. You have to be pretty out of it to not guess what was coming.
The only real other character in this story is Micah's other friend, Dewey. And I had problems with how he was portrayed in this book. Micah and even Janie know that Dewey has feelings for him, and in this regard, Micah is no better than Janie. He knows he doesn't care for Dewey in the way that Dewey wants, but he keeps hanging out with him. After a while it becomes cruel.
That said, Dewey seems to want Micah to himself and there was way too much angst going on between the two of them for me. The dialogue between these two was just overwrought and danced towards the ridiculous after a while. I mean after a while Micah should have gotten a clue about things a lot faster than he did.
Also there was a lot of punching. I had to roll my eyes after a while, because Micah was recovering and I would say that him getting knocked around as much as he did would have landed him in the hospital again.
The other characters in this story, a guy that Janie has a crush on and then dates, her other supposed friend, her parents, Micah's dad were not there really unless it was to move the plot along further. Ms. Zhang doesn't take a lot of time to develop these characters.
For the most part I found Janie's chapters to be childish. Even after we get to what happens to Janie. Her reactions to it (i.e. get the other person in trouble) and than her realization that this other person may not pay for what they did seem to be the kind of reaction I would expect from someone younger. None of it really rang true, and I think that the author just didn't provide enough detail/dialogue or anything to get me to where she was going with Janie.
Micah's chapters were written by someone who had to be on a lot of painkillers. Nothing made a lot of sense and at one point it felt like we had a time jump of a significant period, but it could only have been a few days or maybe a week at that point.
The main reason why I gave this book two stars honestly were the chapters that were pages from Janie's journal. Her taking a look at her family, her friends, and what she was doing and how Micah fit in were a slight twist on fairy tales. That said, I have seen it done better in other works.
The setting of this small town in Iowa really doesn't work. I feel like a lot of these young adult novels set the story in a small town somewhere and except for some key places that the author chose to highlight, I just hard sighed over everything.
The ending was abrupt and left too many questions unanswered. I also had to laugh at one character telling another character to be a better friend which apparently was the moral of the story. There was also some dialogue between Micah and his father and a trip and man on man the whole thing fell flat. I don't know. I honestly can't recommend this book.
I initially selected this book as one of my 2016 new releases to read because the initial blurb I got for the book suggested a different story than what I got. Instead I got a story that revolved around what I would consider a toxic friendship, a confusing narrative, and a rather abrupt ending.
The story is told in alternating points of view, Micah and Janie or Janie and Micah. Seriously, be prepared to read that phrase a lot in this book. Janie's chapters are the "Before" points of view and Micah's chapters are the "After" points of view. We don't know what exactly what event was before and after, but we get a sense of it earlier on when we initially get to Micah's chapter. We also get journal entries from Janie that provide a look at the twisted fairy tale that she saw her life being.
What to say about Janie. I really wish that I could like her. But honestly, I didn't. You come to find out slowly that though she sees Micah as being her soul mate (blech) and that she knows she is destined to be with him forever, she still dates and has crushes on other guys. Now, I am not saying that is wrong, but it is wrong to lead someone on and or have them have to suck it up while you are out exploring yourself. However, even that would not have made me dislike her if it wasn't for the fact that you start to find out that no one but one other person has any idea that Micah and Janie are friends.
Yes. Can you imagine? You are supposedly some other person's best friend, but shh no one can know because if people realize that she is friends with such a loner it can mean that her popularity will take a hit.
During these revelations I started having less sympathy for Micah, because he knows what Janie is doing and he keeps going along with it. Starting in middle school she stopped acknowledging him in public and has become one of the popular people in their high school.
Janie even acknowledges it isn't fair, but she doesn't care because you are quick to find out that she is self centered and selfish (example, she hates that Micah hangs out with his friend Dewey and she dislikes it when she notices that other girls find Micah attractive) and never gets called out on what she's doing by other people except for Micah once in a while.
Micah in all of his chapters seems broken. Without Janie around he doesn't seem to know what else he is good for besides drinking and playing video games. I honestly started to hate Micah's chapters towards the end because the chapters started to feel so melodramatic and honestly the final reveal was a joke. You have to be pretty out of it to not guess what was coming.
The only real other character in this story is Micah's other friend, Dewey. And I had problems with how he was portrayed in this book. Micah and even Janie know that Dewey has feelings for him, and in this regard, Micah is no better than Janie. He knows he doesn't care for Dewey in the way that Dewey wants, but he keeps hanging out with him. After a while it becomes cruel.
That said, Dewey seems to want Micah to himself and there was way too much angst going on between the two of them for me. The dialogue between these two was just overwrought and danced towards the ridiculous after a while. I mean after a while Micah should have gotten a clue about things a lot faster than he did.
Also there was a lot of punching. I had to roll my eyes after a while, because Micah was recovering and I would say that him getting knocked around as much as he did would have landed him in the hospital again.
The other characters in this story, a guy that Janie has a crush on and then dates, her other supposed friend, her parents, Micah's dad were not there really unless it was to move the plot along further. Ms. Zhang doesn't take a lot of time to develop these characters.
For the most part I found Janie's chapters to be childish. Even after we get to what happens to Janie. Her reactions to it (i.e. get the other person in trouble) and than her realization that this other person may not pay for what they did seem to be the kind of reaction I would expect from someone younger. None of it really rang true, and I think that the author just didn't provide enough detail/dialogue or anything to get me to where she was going with Janie.
Micah's chapters were written by someone who had to be on a lot of painkillers. Nothing made a lot of sense and at one point it felt like we had a time jump of a significant period, but it could only have been a few days or maybe a week at that point.
The main reason why I gave this book two stars honestly were the chapters that were pages from Janie's journal. Her taking a look at her family, her friends, and what she was doing and how Micah fit in were a slight twist on fairy tales. That said, I have seen it done better in other works.
The setting of this small town in Iowa really doesn't work. I feel like a lot of these young adult novels set the story in a small town somewhere and except for some key places that the author chose to highlight, I just hard sighed over everything.
The ending was abrupt and left too many questions unanswered. I also had to laugh at one character telling another character to be a better friend which apparently was the moral of the story. There was also some dialogue between Micah and his father and a trip and man on man the whole thing fell flat. I don't know. I honestly can't recommend this book.
Having loved Amy Zhang's debut novel, Falling Into Place, I was highly anticipated her next book which released earlier this year. This Is Where the World Ends follows two secret best friends and their journeys leading up to and after one of them goes missing.
This is told in nonlinear form with Janie narrating Before and Micah narrating After. I liked the nonlinear form but in addition to this were a few journal entries from Janie (all metaphorical entries), most of which I didn't connect with and therefore, could have done without. I got it but I just didn't love it.
What I do love about Amy Zhang's work is that she has a such a hypnotizing voice and such a deliciously sweet writing style and she is so consistent in that that she is fantastic at and unapologetic about creating such flawed, broken, fully fleshed out characters, destructive characters and equally complex relationships and unhealthy friendships. It's so raw and messy refreshing to read a story with unhealthy, toxic friendships and a spotlight on the ways we hurt the people we love the most. In regards to this, tone wise, I'd say if you liked Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver or Dare Me by Megan Abbott, you'll like this dark and twisted tale.
Because the unhealthy friendship between Janie and Micah is what carries the story for me, I almost felt like the mystery of finding out what the WHAT was of the Before and After actually wasn't all that important. And then the "reveal" happened. And, spoiler alert here we come... Janie is raped. I don't know how I feel about 1) rape being the big reveal and 2) me not liking the book even more after "the big reveal," which, in general, I usually do. Rape being the reveal unsettled me in the tired trope kind of way. Also, how things unfold afterwards, particularly the ending...boy, so much more could have been explored in this story. So much.
So, still wrapping my head around all of this and therefore, I can't quite shout from the mountaintop how much I loved this book like I can with Falling Into Place. But boy, it certainly makes for great conversation amongst those who have read this book, that's for sure. I'm curious to know from those who have read this book, what they thought.
If you're new to Amy Zhang, read her debut novel first, then this one. If you've got this on your list of books to read, this book is so captivating, so beautifully written that it's easily a day read, so pull this one out when you want to just drown yourself in...misery. This is Where the World Ends is dark. It's heavy from page one, I think, so you know what you're getting yourself into. So, if you're a mood reader and want something dark to devour, this is certainly a good choice.
Now while I can't say that I connected to This Is Where the World Ends nearly as much as I did Zhang's debut, this is a solid sophomore novel, and I can definitely see many passionate mixed review for this one. But mixed feelings bring great discussion so get this one read and become a part of that discussion.
This is told in nonlinear form with Janie narrating Before and Micah narrating After. I liked the nonlinear form but in addition to this were a few journal entries from Janie (all metaphorical entries), most of which I didn't connect with and therefore, could have done without. I got it but I just didn't love it.
What I do love about Amy Zhang's work is that she has a such a hypnotizing voice and such a deliciously sweet writing style and she is so consistent in that that she is fantastic at and unapologetic about creating such flawed, broken, fully fleshed out characters, destructive characters and equally complex relationships and unhealthy friendships. It's so raw and messy refreshing to read a story with unhealthy, toxic friendships and a spotlight on the ways we hurt the people we love the most. In regards to this, tone wise, I'd say if you liked Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver or Dare Me by Megan Abbott, you'll like this dark and twisted tale.
Because the unhealthy friendship between Janie and Micah is what carries the story for me, I almost felt like the mystery of finding out what the WHAT was of the Before and After actually wasn't all that important. And then the "reveal" happened. And, spoiler alert here we come... Janie is raped. I don't know how I feel about 1) rape being the big reveal and 2) me not liking the book even more after "the big reveal," which, in general, I usually do. Rape being the reveal unsettled me in the tired trope kind of way. Also, how things unfold afterwards, particularly the ending...boy, so much more could have been explored in this story. So much.
So, still wrapping my head around all of this and therefore, I can't quite shout from the mountaintop how much I loved this book like I can with Falling Into Place. But boy, it certainly makes for great conversation amongst those who have read this book, that's for sure. I'm curious to know from those who have read this book, what they thought.
If you're new to Amy Zhang, read her debut novel first, then this one. If you've got this on your list of books to read, this book is so captivating, so beautifully written that it's easily a day read, so pull this one out when you want to just drown yourself in...misery. This is Where the World Ends is dark. It's heavy from page one, I think, so you know what you're getting yourself into. So, if you're a mood reader and want something dark to devour, this is certainly a good choice.
Now while I can't say that I connected to This Is Where the World Ends nearly as much as I did Zhang's debut, this is a solid sophomore novel, and I can definitely see many passionate mixed review for this one. But mixed feelings bring great discussion so get this one read and become a part of that discussion.