Reviews with content warning for Grief - The Knife of Never Letting Go

"We don't say nothing more. What else is there to say? Everything and nothing. You can't say everything, so you don't say nothing."

Das tat weh. Ich glaube nicht, dass ich dieses Buch so schnell vergessen kann. Es ist so unglaublich, brutal, aggressiv, verzweifelt, verwirrt und liebevoll. Es steckt voller Verluste und Entscheidungen und (falscher) Informationen von Menschen, die man sein Leben lang kennt. Es geht um Neuanfänge, die unerwartet schief gehen, sprechende Hunde, die verstummt werden (der Hauptcharakter ist kein John Wick aber die beiden würden sich sicher verstehen) und (das) Unbekannte, was als Feind angesehen wird. Es ist unfassbar schlimm und ich bin so schockiert. Warum zur Hölle lese ich so etwas gerade eben?
Ich weiß nicht, ob ich diese Geschichte weiterempfehlen würde, ich bezweifle es, warum sollte ich andere leiden sehen wollen, nicht in diesem Ausmaß!
Ich mag dieses Buch nicht, es ist ist so kreativ und überzeugend gestaltet aber für mich zu heftig. Ich respektiere es aber. Es ist ein starkes Werk. Es hat mich nur ziemlich geschafft.

"Doing what's right should be easy. It shouldn't be just another big mess like everything else."

Content Warnings

daringreader13's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

4.0 out of 5 stars

This book pulled me in from the start. The language was a bit hard to understand at the beginning but as I kept reading it became easier. Can't wait to pick up the next book and keep going with the series

Edited 4/23/23

OH MY GOD. Reading this along with the audiobook made it ten thousand times better! I literally reacted out loud so many times and never wanted to put it down. It didn’t help that I had two dogs in my lap and one by my feet at a certain point in the book

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nicoleoc1901's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

gromithorror's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

chaptersonapage's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Knife of Never Letting Go is the first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. It follows Todd Hewitt, a boy from Prentisstown who is nearing his thirteenth birthday. The day he becomes a man.

Things work differently in Todd’s world. After there was something called the noise germ that was released on the population, two big things happened. One, everyone began to hear the thoughts of everyone else. Two, the female population was wiped out. This is the life Todd Hewitt knows and has grown up with since he was a baby. That’s going to be turned upside down though when he discovers something that shouldn’t be possible. He finds a girl, and she has no noise.

The premise of this story is interesting. It’s different with the way everyone can read everyone else’s mind, but it seems like they can still figure out ways to hide things from each other if they train themselves enough. It was also cool to see the animal’s thoughts in the world too. Initially I wasn’t sure if I liked this or not, but the way it was written worked out well. The more intelligent animals had more to say than others, and every type of animal seemed to have its own unique way of speaking. Manchee especially wormed his way into my heart.

The writing itself took some time for me to get used to, and while I understand it’s use, I don’t think I ever really warmed up to it at all. Even though a lot of the things were written with phonetic spellings, it was hard for me to read the words when they popped up. Small things like ‘yer’ for ‘your’ were negligible and I could read on fine, but the bigger words always stopped me and pulled me out of the moment as my brain caught up with what the book was saying. I think it was a good stylistic choice though and it wasn’t overdone. There was just enough to represent the world without it being too much.

All the characters were interesting to read about as well. My favorite was Manchee, Todd’s dog. I am a fierce animal lover, and he’s such a good pup. He’s loyal to Todd and, even though Todd didn’t want a dog at first, they become closer as the book goes on. You can feel their connection and I found myself wanting to pet and hug Manchee! Since I obviously can’t with a fictional dog, I forced my own into big hugs!!

Todd is interesting too, though his perspective would annoy me from time to time. He’s pretty naive in the beginning, and it takes a lot of the book for him to open up to things. This was made especially frustrating when he would be told something and we would be pulled into his head rather than hearing the conversation play out. We would hear his thoughts of doubt and disbelief over it, but we wouldn’t hear what he was doubting or disbelieving. We’re left with his denial and have to keep reading and reading to see him finally start to accept the truth. Still, he had a lot of good qualities. He was strong willed and determined. He goes through a lot and his perseverance was really admirable.

Viola is the last of the main three characters, and she was an interesting one. She’s silent. No thoughts are floating about in the noise from her, and she both confuses and intrigues Todd. Her story is a mystery, but it slowly unfolds throughout the story and we learn more about her as she opens up to Todd. I was really interested in her background, and I also felt myself feeling the frustration Todd felt at not knowing her thoughts. I think reading from her perspective would have been really neat since it would give insight on what it’s like for her living in the noise.

The best part of the novel was the way they grew together over the span of the book and how they go from distrusting to relying on one another. It’s definitely a book about survival, and it’s a long and hard fought one. It leaves off on a cliffhanger that I was pretty unhappy with, but thankfully the rest of the books are already out!

I’m glad I finally got around to reading this book. There were a few things that had me choose to rate this as a 4 instead of a 5, but it was a toss up for a while. I’m really interested to see how the movie version of the story plays out. I really hope with all the time they put into it, it does the story justice!

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