Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Echo Wife

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Complicated feelings abt this one. While I liked it somewhat + found it interesting, it was not by any means what I would call good. It ended with many unanswered questions, the pacing was strange, the main character wallowed in self loathing and pity the entire story, and there was A Lot of backstory that tied in only vaguely and overall contributed very little to the book itself.

The thing that bugged me most was the plot tho, or the lack of it. There were Things That Happened, all dutifully caused by one event or another, going on and on in a way that made sense. There were lots of Things That Happened As Results Of Other Things, lots of Small In-Between Goals, but there wasn’t any overarching plot at all. There was no Big Final Goal or Thing To Do before the story ended, they just wandered from one problem to the next until the author decided to end it. (Also, the fact that the main character was a clone, and this was almost never relevant except when the author wanted to point out that This Isn’t Something That’s Possible for a clone - except for this one it is 💕 This was not ever explained.)

Anyway !! This sounds overwhelmingly negative, but I did actually enjoy this book, though it got sad at the end. It was interesting and it held my attention, but it just wasn’t well written.

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oodles17's review

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dark medium-paced

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

4.0

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kt2e56's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense fast-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

I’m speechless. Oh my GOD, this was so good. The sci-fi and mystery angle is interesting in and of itself, but what really pulled me in was the ethics of cloning interwoven throughout. I think it’s because I’m a survivor myself, but I really related to a lot of this book and my heart ached quite a bit for Evelyn who was replaced for not being perfect for her husband and of course Martine who was groomed and molded based on the whims of a deeply fucked up individual.

The parts where Martine can’t figure out what *she* wants versus what she was created to want were really just so chilling. Reading the acknowledgements at the end and discovering that the author is also a survivor helped process a lot of this for me and my instincts about why certain aspects of this book crawled under my skin.

Definitely give this one a read if you can.

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