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3.37 AVERAGE
3.37 AVERAGE
The relationship between the two protagonists is well done. Beyond the relationship the plot is ridiculous.
The thing about Megan Abbott’s books (I’ve determined after now having read two), is that they are not good. They are quick reads, but ultimately not good books. I liked You Will Know Me so much better than this, but really didn’t even like that that much. This was borderline unreadable. The characters didn’t even make any sense.
“A professor once described the brain to me as a great silent vault. A dark theater with nothing playing on the screen. Just electrical charges bouncing corner to corner, like lightbulbs flashing off and on. Science doesn’t yet have any idea how everyone’s private, personal experience of the world springs from that empty vault. We don’t know yet why we sleep or why we dream. What and how we remember. The world is a fiction the brain constructs. The smell of a fresh peach, the punch of a firefly in the night sky. The lilting hush-hush of a first lullaby. The brain fashions it all and we don’t know how, or why.”
There are very few writers who can write so well about the drive and hunger of teenage girls, and what it is to be a woman, in the way Megan Abbott does.
There are very few writers who can write so well about the drive and hunger of teenage girls, and what it is to be a woman, in the way Megan Abbott does.
I've been a fan of Megan Abbott's for years, and I think this is her best book yet. Taut and compelling, as most of her books are, but this one feels especially precise. I couldn't put it down from the first sentence.
The pacing of this is weird and lurching. And all of the characters, despite having PhDs, are extremely stupid.
Entertaining and a bit disturbing — the disturbing parts (more to do with the psychology of the characters than the nature of the story) stuck with me in a kind of uncomfortable way, which is why I gave it a middling rating, although I did find it a book that for the most part I wanted to continue reading. The twists were not *super* twisty... I won’t say I saw them coming from a mile away but I more or less did.
I want to start by saying that I personally did not really like this book. But I appreciate it as a richly crafted work and an interesting story. I think setting and character portrayals were pretty good. I loved the ending. I think it deserves 4 stars, but I most definitely did not really like it. It was dark. I am in a dark place, and it probably was not the best choice for me at this time. I sort of raced through it because I wanted it to be over because I could hardly handle the guilt it somehow seemed to be heaping on me. But I had to know the end. At least there was the end.
Wow! What an intense ride. I could hardly put down this book. Megan Abbott's done it again.
Not as good as her other books. I didn’t really like or care about either one. Disappointed.
My three stars is really a three and a half. Good, but somehow, it left me feeling like I wish there had been more, something...something, but I don't know what.