Reviews - Pew | The StoryGraph

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1.86k reviews for:

Pew

Catherine Lacey

3.85 AVERAGE

ameliecdps's review against another edition

3.0

3/4? Might change my mind

aircnditioner's review against another edition

4.5

emotional mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Uhmmmm I liked it. This is definitely a book you should take your time with, and I didn’t do that, which was my issue. Everything everyone felt made me feel like I was being enlightened with some new special information that only I myself can know. All of it was very inspirational; looking at you, horse woman.

This was good. Emotional. Reflective. What more is there to say? A little trippy. I liked it.

Would recommend

skmarley's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

miri_kez's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

ols_333's review against another edition

3.5

reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

amboop's review against another edition

1.0

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

It's only February but I'm pretty sure this will be my most disliked book of the year. for starters, I apparently read something completely different than what the excerpt promised - this was bland, monotonous, and anticlimactic. The main character, whose gender and race were ambiguous, lacked any kind of personality and viewed the world through a distant lens that offered almost no insight to their place in it. Rather than being mysterious, they instead felt drab and irritating at points as they allowed themselves to be lead around mindlessly from one spot to another.

The biggest issue I have with this book is that the main character's identity is meant to be vague and ambiguous, yet it's literally ALL that the other characters care about. I personally could not have cared less about which gender or race Pew was, so that being the main focus was exhausting. I think there could have been a really interesting narrative, especially with the town being almost entirely religious, with accepting a person despite having answers to their identity. Instead of playing with that, Lacey leaned into the stereotype of a stunted religious town who refused to accept someone who didn't belong to them. How did she do this? With the most long-winded, uninteresting, and random monologues from any character that spent more than three minutes with Pew.

Beyond all of this, the driving plot of this book is a mysterious "Forgiveness Festival" that I assume makes the book a "horror" novel. The scariest part of this book is that an editor signed off on it and allowed it to be published as anything other than a short story.

I guess this is decently written, but that's the nicest thing I can think to say about it. This book has been so hyped up, and the blurb about it made it sound far more interesting than it ended up being.