Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
painfully bad
This starts rough: hollow, clunky writing that positions the novel as a Fifty Shades of White Noise DeLillo pastiche. Once there's a knock at the door (a device so hoary that Alam seems to be trolling you), things begin to cohere. The result is a fairly effective device for delivering several layers of middle-class dread: property, parenthood, consumerism, racial sensitivity. Is that enough? Is the blurriness of every character by design, the better to project oneself onto them and feel their fear more acutely? Or will their two-dimensional construction keep me from remembering anything about this book later other than being glad that its particular end-times scenario (which is, by dint of its better-executed vagueness, in a pretty high percentile of stomach-churning believability, as this kind of novel goes) is not yet underway? I really don't know.
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The writing is genuinely bad. I almost can’t believe this went through any rounds with an editor or a publisher. The sentence that made me stop reading after 8 pages was “the gravel made its gravelly sound under Clays leather driving shoes.”
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I have hopes the Netflix movie might actually be better than the book.
A rare occurrence where the movie is actually better than the book.
Could not stand how the author uses 20 words to describe one simple object. It got better in the second half but by that point I was over the writing.
Could not stand how the author uses 20 words to describe one simple object. It got better in the second half but by that point I was over the writing.