Reviews with content warning for Pregnancy - Normal People

This book was just fine, honestly. I was just expecting a lot more from what I'd heard online.
My issues with the book:
- no quotation marks (just a personal red flag)
- third person, present tense (my least favorite)
- there were only really two characters, Marianne and Connell, and they didn't really have any personality

Content Warnings

kaireading's review against another edition

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funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Such a lovely and thought-provoking book. Rooney’s writing style is beautiful: clear, bold and just shocking at times (as if, no one ever says that because it sounds so weird but the book somehow makes it sound quite mundane) but at the same time nonchalant. It flows so beautifully and it’s easy and satisfying to read. The characters in the book are very realistic and relatable, they are not idolized in any way, they just… exist. Sally describes them in a neutral way so that she encourages the readers to develop their own opinions. The book touches on many real-life topics and is overall a very pleasant and comforting read, because the heavier topics are presented in an easily digestible way.

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annoyedhumanoid's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

(adjusted from 2.375 [rounded down to 2.25] to 2.75)

ugghhh. i went into this really wanting to like it, but it was just not for me. that's partly my fault. i had decided to take a hiatus from reading The Song of Achilles because i knew it had a tragic ending and i'm not in the best mental state rn and wanted something uplifting, when i discovered both the ebook and audiobook of Normal People immediately available to borrow on Libby. don't know what i was thinking to not check the moods and content warnings if i wanted something lighthearted—that's literally what storygraph is for, totally on me.

in a word, this book was upsetting. i've heard someone (specifically, booktuber emmie) describe reading The Goldfinch (haven't read it myself) as having a kind of second-hand depression effect, and i understand it now because Normal People had this very effect on me. three particularly disturbing scenes come to mind:

Connell's former economics teacher attempting to sexually assault him

Marianne's entire relationship with Lukas

, and

the otherwise-nondescript scene ~88% through when Connell and Marianne have sex for the first time since their first year in college

. this latter scene was the worst of the bunch for me because both characters felt so hollow—not in their characterization (Sally Rooney could never), but in their mental states. it's like they're both desperately grasping at something to give them a sense of fulfillment, but their desperation is so painfully undisguised that i found it genuinely depressing. from the very beginning there's a vague sense that the two will end up together in the end, so for it to amount to (at the time) this bleak scene makes their love seem more like inevitability, futility, rather than meant-to-be. the ending doesn't do much to dispel this pervasive hopelessness. of course, this isn't an inherent downfall of the book, Sally Rooney is allowed to write a modern tragedy, it just very much wasn't for me, unfortunately.

with that main point out of the way, it was objectively well-written with lovely prose. i really liked its pacing, jumping forward in time but catching readers up with flashbacks. its general concept reminded me of The Namesake, following a character or characters across years of their life and focusing mainly on romantic relationships, and i prefer Normal People's execution over The Namesake's. 2⅜ stars

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bhopeu's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

The fact that I used to HATE this book and gave it 2 stars and now after rereading it after 2 years & then almost gave it 5 stars is crazy. I think the main reason why I used to hate this book was because I read it at the wrong time in my life and now that I can finally understand the characters and the decisions they’ve made better and now that I am in the right state reading this book made the reading experience so much better and enjoyable. And maybe because I read this now physically and annotated a lot, I noticed things I used to not notice in the past.

Content Warnings