Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

31 reviews

goodthingsread's review against another edition

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

2.5

I should have known that I wouldn't like this book as much as I thought I would. It's a retelling of <i>The Great Gatsby</i> and I was one of those people who didn't really like <i>The Great Gatsby</i>. I never really got it. Or maybe I got It and I just didn't care to read about It. I had thought that maybe this book would spin the original story enough that I would find something worthwhile in the plot, but it didn't. It actually held quite closely to the original story and the only variations came in the form of (1) Jordan being Vietnamese and (2) magic.

Point (1) felt like it could have really been something. Unfortunately, Jordan being adopted and trying so hard to blend in actually made her ethnicity fade into the background. It's accurate and understandable characterization and I don't really fault it in that respect. But it was a letdown, especially when Jordan meets up with a group of Vietnamese (and other Asian) performers that assist in her tapping into her innate magic and her history. That comes so late in the book, however, that it feels very tacked on and doesn't really get dug into. Jordan gets so drunk halfway through a hangout with those characters that everything gets fuzzy and forgotten but while drunk she learns things and reveals things about herself, but because it's all from her perspective, we don't get the full impact. I would have much rather had Jordan learning more about her background and herself earlier in the story and running as an undercurrent throughout, but I don't know if the author didn't want to do that for her own reasons or because it wouldn't have worked while sticking to the original <i>Gatsby</i> story.

Point (2) I was <i>extremely</i> frustrated by because the magic system and world building around it was so infuriatingly vague. It's very loose and sprinkled here and there, seemingly never a part of the main narrative until the very end, so it's frustrating to not understand and feel like I'm missing something. For example, when Jordan is invited up to see Gatsby, she says she feels cloaked in something that makes others not notice her. Then, when she arrives in Gatsby's office, she feels like it's ripped away under his gaze <b>or</b> that his gaze is just that sharp. I genuinely have no idea which is or even could be true, and it doesn't add an air of mystery (like perhaps intended) but makes me feel like I am missing something that should be obvious, if I knew more about the setting's magic. I am definitely missing the impact of some uses of magic simply from lack of knowledge. The scene where Jordan watches land magic from the train to New York means practically nothing, just thrown in there like an afterthought, and I can tell that it was intended to mean more. Additionally, the casualness with which Jordan talks about ghosts is also a part of this. Is Jordan the only one who can see ghosts? For the longest time, I thought ghosts were simply confined to the Baker house/family until the very last chapter. I also can't tell who is a ghost until she makes it obvious, three paragraphs later. Magic is treated both as superfluous, glitter sprinkled about to make things a little shinier and unique, but it's also a central part to the end of the novel, informing the choices of so many characters. (And is a huge part of the final scene between Jordan and Nick, which just blindsided me so hard that I spent a very long time staring into space trying to process.)

There's also this weird note I got from some moments. At a certain point, Jordan speaks about how she likes to keep herself untethered and starts to talk about how "that summer" felt different. I think this is supposed to foreshadow the impending fall of the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression, but it comes off sounding like a teen waxing poetic about summer camp. "The things we learned <i>that summer</i> would stay with us for the rest of our lives..."

All that being said, I really, really do like the author's writing style generally. It's poetic and smooth and beautiful. I just didn't like its application in <i>this</i> story. I also liked the touches of queerness, which I felt did appropriately influence Jordan's character and choices.

I want to give her other books a chance and I hope she continues to publish more over the years. This just doesn't work for me.

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katierobertsonshaddix's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0


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alizirrah's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Gorgeously evocative - vicious and incisive and subversive in the best possible ways. Each sentence felt so precise and surprising, like no word was wasted or out of place. I loved how everyone was casually queer and messily all in each other's business.

So why did it take me over 2 months to read this fairly short novel? I could not tell you. Possibly it was because it often took a lot of concentration to follow and parse each sentence's meaning, and when I tend to read before bed, this would lead to me nodding off after only reading a few pages. There were a few times that the story suddenly slipped into a flashback and I wasn't sure what time the scene took place, and other times I *thought* we had flashed back but then that scene actually had been current.

But it is an absolutely gorgeous book overall. The magical elements were fascinating and very memorable. I found this parallel universe 1920's U.S. very compelling.

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larbster90's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5


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scifi_rat's review against another edition

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madamenovelist's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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kodiex's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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casmith512's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25


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zoiejanelle's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

you actually need to love Gatsby to enjoy this book. as someone who was fascinated and inspired by The Great Gatsby, i really liked how closely this book resembled the original text in terms of pacing, plot, and themes. the dissimilation and destruction of Jordan’s “American Dream” is an interesting parallel to Gatsby’s, and i really loved how the author added a new layer of complexity and authenticity through her perspective as well as her backstory and heritage. Jordan was, like all the characters, a bad person. her struggle to reconcile her tumultuous upbringing, the standards and values of the world around her, and the question to defining and understanding her own identity (as a Vietnamese person and a queer woman) were interesting and unlike anything i’ve read before. i loved seeing the world — Daisy’s flightiness, Nick’s perceptiveness, Tom’s abuse, Gatsby’s ambition — through her eyes and i especially loved that she and Daisy in particular had more agency in their own stories.

as many others have stated in their reviews, i didn’t fully enjoy the magical elements. i think this was due to a lack of proper world-building at the outset. after immersing myself in one version of Gatsby so many times, i wasn’t keen on blindly accepting the, at some points, poorly explained magic systems. however, the magic was sooooo cool and i wish these systems and histories would have been fleshed out so i could have bought into them with more enthusiasm.

the writing style, the pacing, the hopeful (yearning) conclusion were all extremely reminiscent of Fitzgerald’s original work, and Vo’s unique perspective on immigration, Vietnamese culture and community, and womanhood make this work really stand out. a very interesting book that certainly won’t be for everyone but definitely holds its own in comparison to other Gatsby retellings. 

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auudrey's review against another edition

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

3.25


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