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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
dark
reflective
I loved so much about this, but every time I heard the audiobook narrator say World Historical I wanted to jump off a cliff.... where the rocks and the harbor are one 😏
dark
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Absolutely stunning. The next great dark academia craze. The pure joy I felt at following these teenage women rebelling, loving, living, and dying. Virginia and Laura's relationship is purely fascinating and all the characters are technicolour in their pure vibrancy. I cannot get enough.
It's been a while since I read a book that was this enthralling. I was completely sucked in, I was THERE, with Laura and Virginia. In fact, I WAS Laura. I was also Virginia. Amazing. Reading this felt cozy and familiar but also different and inspiring. I cried toward the end quite a few times as well. 10/10 would read again and again and again. Goes into the "revisit every autumn" category for me.
Laura Stearns from a suburb of Las Vegas yearns for a World-Historical life, in the manner of Sebastian Oliver Webster who authored Laura's favorite book, All Before Them. Webster attended St. Dunstan's, a New England boarding school, and now Laura is headed there as well, for her junior year of high school. She's an emotional person, but passive, rather than passionate. She finds St. Dunstan's church choir, especially its leader Virginia Strauss, transcendent, and eventually takes a place among them. Virginia and the choir are Laura's whole world.
If you think that sounds like a recipe for disaster, you're right. The World Cannot Give is a Literary read, with a lot of messed up white people (including a hot priest). I embraced the artistry of Burton's writing most of the way through, but found the ending a little too too. It's not bad, I just didn't quite get there. I feel like there's something I didn't connect to that more sophisticated readers would pick up.
Thanks, NetGalley for the digital ARC!
If you think that sounds like a recipe for disaster, you're right. The World Cannot Give is a Literary read, with a lot of messed up white people (including a hot priest). I embraced the artistry of Burton's writing most of the way through, but found the ending a little too too. It's not bad, I just didn't quite get there. I feel like there's something I didn't connect to that more sophisticated readers would pick up.
Thanks, NetGalley for the digital ARC!
I received an Advanced Proof from Goodreads and I definitely wasn’t disappointed!
The story is so easy to settle into and the characters were so intriguing. While the outcome was slightly predictable towards the end I found myself hoping it wasn’t true which resulted in a late night of reading because I couldn’t put the book down.
On top of this I found the writing extremely refreshing for a coming of age story — elevated without being pretentious. The questions posed and the conversations the characters had stuck with me after putting the book down as I began working my way through the same conversations in my head.
I have definitely become a fan and can’t wait to pick up the author’s first book but don’t miss this one. It will leave you turning the phrase shipwrecked soul over and over in your head for days after finishing.
The story is so easy to settle into and the characters were so intriguing. While the outcome was slightly predictable towards the end I found myself hoping it wasn’t true which resulted in a late night of reading because I couldn’t put the book down.
On top of this I found the writing extremely refreshing for a coming of age story — elevated without being pretentious. The questions posed and the conversations the characters had stuck with me after putting the book down as I began working my way through the same conversations in my head.
I have definitely become a fan and can’t wait to pick up the author’s first book but don’t miss this one. It will leave you turning the phrase shipwrecked soul over and over in your head for days after finishing.
"Boys will be boys" except they're all terrible not-so-Christian children doing "bad" things like making blood oaths to long-dead authors and then actually bad things like revenge porn and murder. It's like if The Secret History was Christian and young-adult and more queer...for better or for worse, I don't know.
Parts of this story were great– the teenage romanticism and then the following catharsis that comes with realizing everything you've ever known has always been a lie, kids beings stupid and being willing to follow one another to the ends of the earth just because they seem effortlessly awesome, etc...but there are parts that make no sense.
After the boys all watch Virginia's video, why do their personalities do a complete 180º? They went from regular teenagers to sex offenders almost instantly and we're supposed to believe it just because "that's just how men are"? And I don't know how to feel about Bonnie, at the end. Are we meant to support her for making a profit off school-drama and CP-related crimes that have nothing to do with her? Her shitty ex-boyfriend sexually violates and humiliates another girl, so she gets to accept thousand-dollar donations over it because people feel bad for her by proxy?
This book was great until it got to the arc with Virginia's video, which is where it stopped making sense and felt more rushed and hastily put together. Maybe that was the entire point and maybe the whole book was always going to come crashing down like this in this exact way, but it was awful. I'm not one to think a book is bad just because it discusses immoral things (I can enjoy a good disgusting book), but The World Cannot Give didn't do it in a satisfactory way. It just pisses me off.
Parts of this story were great– the teenage romanticism and then the following catharsis that comes with realizing everything you've ever known has always been a lie, kids beings stupid and being willing to follow one another to the ends of the earth just because they seem effortlessly awesome, etc...but there are parts that make no sense.
After the boys all watch Virginia's video, why do their personalities do a complete 180º? They went from regular teenagers to sex offenders almost instantly and we're supposed to believe it just because "that's just how men are"? And I don't know how to feel about Bonnie, at the end. Are we meant to support her for making a profit off school-drama and CP-related crimes that have nothing to do with her? Her shitty ex-boyfriend sexually violates and humiliates another girl, so she gets to accept thousand-dollar donations over it because people feel bad for her by proxy?
This book was great until it got to the arc with Virginia's video, which is where it stopped making sense and felt more rushed and hastily put together. Maybe that was the entire point and maybe the whole book was always going to come crashing down like this in this exact way, but it was awful. I'm not one to think a book is bad just because it discusses immoral things (I can enjoy a good disgusting book), but The World Cannot Give didn't do it in a satisfactory way. It just pisses me off.
dark
mysterious
tense
Dark, eerie, and queer. For the girlies who had intense female friendships in high school ;)
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes