A review by halfpastsix
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I took a pretty long break from reading this book at about the halfway point: it made me cringe too hard and too often. Frankly, there was a point, some time before I took that break, where I started simply hate-reading it. In the end, it was maybe the best way to enjoy it, as the burn of all that cringe had somewhat faded away when I started on the second part of the story. In retrospect, I feel that it was perhaps worth it, wading through all that cringe to reach the interesting part. Still, I would have liked to enjoy the author's virtuosity for a whole book, not half a book. 

There are not one but two tropes that I hate in this story: 1) Priviledged person learns that life is hard, thinks they've discovered sliced bread 2) Storyteller tries to pull a "gotchu! I wasn't wasting your time after all!" towards the end. I would honestly have hated this book, had I not bawled my eyes out for like an hour at the end lol.