Reviews with content warning for Body shaming - Lessons in Chemistry

Despite a wonderful idea, Garmus's popular novel fails to deliver on every account. Garmus promises a book about the experience of women, but with an unbearable protagonist and little exploration, Garmus never dives into what sexism feels like nor its real causes and reactions. In fact, the main character refuses to demonstrate any real growth in the book at all. Character relationships are always told rather than shown, making the reader hollow when the horrible, melodramatic plot points occur to them. Although Garmus introduces deep topics, she seems to lack the courage or the understanding to explore them with substance, instead having her main character be randomly bothered by instances in her past only to move on a sentence or two later. Plot points are randomly thrown into the novel with no consideration of how they affect the characters or the themes, leaving an unsatisfactory journey. Without this deep exploration and path, Garmus never says anything profound about her themes and certainly never touches real women in their trials and tribulations.

Additionally, Garmus's writing style is subpar at best. She seems to believe her readers are stupid as she tells them absolutely everything in frank detail and covers it over with big "sciency" words, never allowing the writing to breathe. Her sentences are simple and often boringly strung together, never giving vivid detail to her world to allow the reader to experience it. Occasionally, she'll hit gold with a particular line, but overall, she seems to favor hovering over everything just to produce a mess of thoughts. In the end, the novel reads like a string of random ideas never actually explored in depth—the substance of a first draft but not of a good novel.

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kickitupanotch7's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny informative mysterious relaxing sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

Phenomenal with extremely developed characters. Includes the most interesting perspective of a dog I’ve ever seen or heard.

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honesty_reads's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.75

It was good but it was very methodical. A good book, but not in my top of all time. I did like how everything tied together in the end!

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