Reviews

Invisible by Pete Hautman

aangela1010's review

5.0

Whoa...disturbing. but it was good. i really like this author. the first one i read of his was "Godless" which i really enjoyed. i have not been let down yet!

micha's review

5.0

This was the first book ever to make me cry. I thought the ending was so sad. I was actually quite surprised to read that people didn't understand or "get" the book. I might spoil it right here.

But basically during the first half of the book you learn that there is Doug and Andy but by the end you learn that Andy was never there. Doug was still seeing Andy and imagining him being there. Andy had died in a fire before the start of the book. Who knows if Andy's ghost really did come to Doug or if he was just making him up. I just find it so sad how they both were interested in fire and yet Andy had died in a fire and Doug gets burns all over his face and body from his play trains having exploded at the end of the book. And how as he's laying in the burn victims section at the hospital Andy comes there and he has a conversation with him, which I thought the conversation was sad but I can't remember it.

I didn't think it was a hard read to understand, it's like one of those movies where you have to watch it a second time when you learn by the ending that something was never really there.

audiblybooked's review

2.0

This was a quick read and mildly interesting. I liked some of the random thoughts of the obviously mentally ill main character, like him wanting to count to 180,000 by 17s, things like that kept the book entertaining and gave it a bit more personality. Outside of that, the story itself was kind of ho hum with a plot twist that was very obvious from the beginning and when revealed, it was done so matter of factly that it was almost as if the author was saying "of course you saw this coming, I meant for you to" (which I actually kind of enjoyed). I also almost liked the way it ended until it went just that one step too far and became almost cartoonish. Grab it from the library for something quick and painless to read.

annikalb's review

3.0

7/10

The plot was disappointingly predictable, and slightly cliché by this point. However, the writing was still impressive considering the narrator. Of course, that also means the writing was dislikable, because Dougie definitely was. The first two thirds are pretty creepy. The anticipation is unnerving, especially when you’re fairly sure what will happen, but you don’t know when, or how, and what Hartman will do as explanation. I wish it blew my mind. It didn’t. And that’s okay. It wasn’t special, but I would still recommend it. There are some good lessons in here for aspiring writers.