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yvo_about_books's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
2.0
Finished reading: October 22nd 2024
“We’ll exist at the extremes because the middle is where the healthy pass their time.”
WARNING: a VERY unexpected unpopular opinion review!!
Oh yes, this rating is not a mistake. I still can't believe it myself, but one of my most anticipated releases of 2024 and one I had already pencilled in as a 5 star read ended up being a VERY unexpected dud for me. I was SO excited to be buddy reading All The Colors Of The Dark with Nicki, and we both had high expectations for this book. To our surprise, both of us ended up struggling considerably with this story that so many people seem to love... It almost felt like we were reading a completely different story than everyone else, and I have to be honest here and say that I don't think I would have finished it if I had read it alone. Why did I struggle so much with All The Colors In The Dark then? I'll try to keep it brief, because I don't want to turn this shorties review in a full blown rant. Yes, it was THAT bad for me. Please don't shoot the messenger!
So, All The Colors In The Dark. I'm not sure if it was Fickle Freida ruining the day for me, but the fact is that both of us struggled considerably from the very beginning. I know that most people seem to love the writing, but for me personally it was just too flowery and it was hard to make proper sense of the sentences at times. This story is definitely more literary fiction than crime thriller; not something I expected and not a genre I usually enjoy. I know this reaction is very personal and I did become a bit more used to the writing style after a while, but I never warmed up to it and especially dialogues could be very frustrating. Why does everything have to be so incredibly vague?! I like surprises and twists in my stories, but in this case it felt like the author kept the reader in the dark until the very end, and even then things weren't cleared up in a proper way. And then I'm not even talking about the fact that you have to be able to suspend your disbelief a LOT, because there are so many situations that just don't make sense...
What more? Well, definitely the fact that All The Colors In The Dark is just so incredibly SLOW. I know that this is a character-driven story and those tend to be slower, but this was just glacial pace almost throughout. Directly linked to this is the fact that this story is just extremely overlong; it could have been cut in half and it would still be overlong for me. I think I would have enjoyed this story so much more as a crime thriller... But then again, literary fiction doesn't usually work for me in the first place. I wasn't a fan of the short chapters either, and to make things worse they jumped all over the place. Add a boatload of characters that I was never able to warm up to, probably partly due to the writing style and wonky dialogues, and it was a struggle to keep reading. Sure, I'll say that I did like Saint and Patch initially, but only before Patch was kidnapped. Afterwards, their behavior started to frustrate me more and more, and I wasn't a fan of how everyone seems to be enabling Patch's behavior. And then I haven't even mentioned the focus on religion in part of the plot... And the fact that the ending itself was mainly confusing and utterly not worth the time we invested to finish it despite our struggles. I'm so glad we buddy read it with Nicki though, because we could compare and talk through our frustrations on Twitter. It took us ages to get through this story, but mostly because we couldn't really stomach more than a dozen or so chapters each day... And it is honestly a miracle we even finished it.
Yikes, this review ended up being a rant after all... As you might have already guessed, All The Colors Of The Dark and me REALLY didn't get along. I'm still shocked myself, because I absolutely loved his previous book We Begin At The End... But this story most definitely wasn't my cup of tea.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Stalking, Abortion, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism