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breannew's review against another edition
5.0
Loooooved the audiobook as it had recordings of the whales
verahuerlimann's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
samidhak's review against another edition
3.0
What a marvellous, engaging, and interesting read. I loved every second that spoke about whales. It dives deep (pun intended) into climate change, human- animal relationships, whales and other intelligent sea mammals, love stories, indigenous culture, and some great work of investigative journalism.
I shaved off two stars because even though it’s a great book, it’s not a memoir. The timeline that follows Doreen and her son Max along the whale migration route is written in short bursts of emotionless sentences that was jarring to read. It didn’t emotionally move me like I would expect from a memoir, I’d rather call it a brief and factual biographical narrative of the author’s life.
Although, I do recommend this book I also believe it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. For me the highlight of the book was at the beginning and the last chapter - the rest of it was journalism at its best but memoir writing at its most tasteless.
I shaved off two stars because even though it’s a great book, it’s not a memoir. The timeline that follows Doreen and her son Max along the whale migration route is written in short bursts of emotionless sentences that was jarring to read. It didn’t emotionally move me like I would expect from a memoir, I’d rather call it a brief and factual biographical narrative of the author’s life.
Although, I do recommend this book I also believe it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. For me the highlight of the book was at the beginning and the last chapter - the rest of it was journalism at its best but memoir writing at its most tasteless.
marryf96's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
4.0
natbrick's review
3.0
3.7 stars to be specific! I'm going to give my general breakdown of this book in star ratings because I couldn't decide what to rate it overall:
- writing: 4.5/5
- imagery: 4/5
- describing characters: 4/5
- portrayal of mother-child relationship: 5/5 -- beautifully done
- cover: 5/5 (LOL I just love every version of the cover I've seen)
- pacing: 1.5/5 (this book was too slow for me, and while I know memoirs aren't going to be fast-paced, necessarily, I found myself wishing it would leave me with more of a cliff-hanger feeling)
The main themes I drew from this book: paralleling with whales' lives, similarities and differences between other mammal species when it comes to mothering/protecting their babies, RESILIENCE, birth/rebirth...
Climate change also played a big role in this book, of course, and while I appreciated that, I found some of the pages/sections that went into detailed statistics + quotes to be kinda boring. I didn't pick up this book for a history lesson nor a warning about climate change, and perhaps I was mislead in that regard. I wish there had been more STORY and less research, but I completely respect that the way I would approach a memoir is very different than how Cunningham did, and that makes her writing style no less valid! I do think I would've enjoyed this book more if I'd been a researcher of whales or really passionate about studying them. Some of the imagery was beautiful and the writing was wonderful, but I wanted to get lost in the story and instead, I found myself kinda lost in the recitation of facts and numbers.
- writing: 4.5/5
- imagery: 4/5
- describing characters: 4/5
- portrayal of mother-child relationship: 5/5 -- beautifully done
- cover: 5/5 (LOL I just love every version of the cover I've seen)
- pacing: 1.5/5 (this book was too slow for me, and while I know memoirs aren't going to be fast-paced, necessarily, I found myself wishing it would leave me with more of a cliff-hanger feeling)
The main themes I drew from this book: paralleling with whales' lives, similarities and differences between other mammal species when it comes to mothering/protecting their babies, RESILIENCE, birth/rebirth...
Climate change also played a big role in this book, of course, and while I appreciated that, I found some of the pages/sections that went into detailed statistics + quotes to be kinda boring. I didn't pick up this book for a history lesson nor a warning about climate change, and perhaps I was mislead in that regard. I wish there had been more STORY and less research, but I completely respect that the way I would approach a memoir is very different than how Cunningham did, and that makes her writing style no less valid! I do think I would've enjoyed this book more if I'd been a researcher of whales or really passionate about studying them. Some of the imagery was beautiful and the writing was wonderful, but I wanted to get lost in the story and instead, I found myself kinda lost in the recitation of facts and numbers.