Reviews - The World Cannot Give

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543 reviews for:

The World Cannot Give

Tara Isabella Burton

3.57 AVERAGE

branca's review against another edition

2.75

dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lmv_1721's review against another edition

4.0

This book is a fucking trip. Weird cult-y manipulation, obsession... It's wild. Simultaneously incredibly disturbing and incredibly enthralling.

anna__b's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

If I were being totally objective, this might be more like a 4-4.5 star book, but wow, it just completely exceeded my expectations. The Secret History is one of my favorite books of all time, and it's obvious to see why this book is being compared to it, but I've been burned by other "dark academia" books that claim to be just like The Secret History before, so I was cautious going in. I was also a bit skeptical of the religious aspect of the book, being someone who is not at all religious. But The World Cannot Give gave me everything I was hoping for and more. It was just so effective in accomplishing what it set out to do, and in immersing the reader in its world.

While I don't think that everyone who liked The Secret History will automatically like this book, it definitely shared a lot of the elements that I enjoyed the most - the complicated and frequently unlikeable characters, and the way they fell into a dark, cultish group. The overall sense of impending doom also reminded me of The Secret History in a way. I could tell that something horrible was going to happen at the end of this book, and it had me on edge the whole time I was reading, but I never could've predicted the twist that actually happened and I was blown away.

Laura as a protagonist was also an element of the book that really stood out for me. The author does such a wonderful job of putting the reader into her headspace, even through the third person narration, and she remains sympathetic even through her most questionable decisions. I don't know if it can necessarily be called unreliable narration, since Laura herself is not actually narrating, but the book really puts you straight into Laura's flawed and naïve thought process. There were so many times I just wanted to grab her through the page and shake her so she would make better choices. Even though you, as the reader, understand more about the situation than Laura herself does, it's still so scarily easy to see how she falls into Virginia's orbit, and it makes you wonder if the same could've happened to you in her place. Growing up I was also shy, closeted, had trouble sticking up for myself, and attended a small and insular high school, so I often found Laura painfully relatable. And overall, I felt like the book did a fantastic job of capturing some of the realities of life for many teenage girls. Laura's naïve idealization of St. Dunstan's, and how she believes that going to a different place can make her a fundamentally different person, feel so realistic. The depiction of the casual cruelty of teenagers, and of how high school drama can feel so earth-shattering and life-defining while you're in it, especially in an insular environment like a boarding school, also felt very accurate. I'm sure that not all readers would relate to these things, but so much of this book really spoke to my personal adolescent experiences, and I think that's a large part of what made me love it as much as I did.

I think the one major weakness of this book, and the main thing that would pull down my rating if I were being totally objective, is the general underdevelopment of the boys in the choir. I didn't get a distinct sense of any of them as individuals besides Brad, and it made it harder to care about the plot developments that happened later on involving them. But in the end, the true heart of this book is the twisted relationship between Laura and Virginia, and that was done well - the boys are somewhat secondary.

There are certainly other flaws to the book besides just that, but it manages to do so many things so well: the depiction of an obsessive, homoerotic female friendship, the portrayal of how religious fanaticism can be used as a dangerous tool, the overall imagery and atmosphere. Although I can see why not everyone would enjoy it, it hit every mark for me personally and it's one of my favorites of this year so far.