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3.86 AVERAGE
3.86 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Other reviews of this book are all over the place in their main takeaways, and rightfully so. This story bent genres to include fairytales, horror, love, suspense, and social commentary. Some strings of the story didn’t seem to go anywhere resolute, yet all came back to a glaring commentary on racism and sexism in America. This book was a twisted, gnarled knot for me and I loved it. I found Apollo easy to root for and I absolutely loved the times he was tricked, failed, struggled and was proven wrong. I have some questions still at the end of the book, but to me that’s part of the happily ever after fairytale aspect - it’s for me to fill in….
The Changeling is a fantastic hybrid of genres, flitting from realistic fiction to horror to crime drama to fairy tale to fantasy over the course of the novel. Victor LaValle brilliantly tackles themes of parenthood and marital love and the nuance & messiness of those topics are explored in an extremely satisfying fashion. I personally found some of the genre transitions to be a bit jarring, but the story takes so many fantastic twists and turns that it is well worth a read!
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The story started out so well. The atmosphere, the building sense of dread, the emotions it invoked... all beatifully executed. However, as it went on, the story just went into too many directions. So much of what happened in the later part of the story felt like they belonged to a different book. It felt like in each part, the characters turn into completely different people. It got to a point where the plot started to feel a bit ridiculous. I also felt that the plot did not justify the length of the book - it could have been a much shorter, much tigher story, but instead it was just a lot of chunks of nothing in between major plot points.
This book is not for me at this time. I don’t know that I’ll come back to it, but it wasn’t holding my interest.