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A review by helensbookshelf
Everything About You by Heather Child
3.0
I loved the idea behind the story and the way that it takes the tech we have today and extrapolates it all just that little bit into what we might have tomorrow!
It made it feel very realistic and relatable, like a world I'm excited to see. If anyone remembers Tomorrow's World on the BBC, it made me think of that a lot while I was reading it (spaghetti plants aside).
Part of the story is that Freya is struggling to find her own space in the world and I get that, it just felt like she didn't understand, and didn't care to understand, basic things about how society works. She was so clueless it was hard to fully grasp the world and how it worked. It was like she’d just been dumped there and was a stranger herself. As the reader we learn the world through the characters and because Freya didn't understand her world it made me feel lost, like basic parts of the plotline were passing me by.
As an example, Freya goes on a date she's arranged online and 8 men turn up. She is confused and scared by it but after discussions with her virtual assistant appears to eventually grasp the situation - I never did.
But the more I think about the book after I've read it the more I like it. It makes important points about living in an echo chamber, how we need to be careful about passing off control of our own lives, and how much authority we give to artificial voices programmed to guess at what we might want.
I loved the storyline and the tech and I had a lot of sympathy for Freya but I felt like it was hard to get a grasp on the world. It stopped it from being a truly immersive book for me.
It made it feel very realistic and relatable, like a world I'm excited to see. If anyone remembers Tomorrow's World on the BBC, it made me think of that a lot while I was reading it (spaghetti plants aside).
Part of the story is that Freya is struggling to find her own space in the world and I get that, it just felt like she didn't understand, and didn't care to understand, basic things about how society works. She was so clueless it was hard to fully grasp the world and how it worked. It was like she’d just been dumped there and was a stranger herself. As the reader we learn the world through the characters and because Freya didn't understand her world it made me feel lost, like basic parts of the plotline were passing me by.
As an example, Freya goes on a date she's arranged online and 8 men turn up. She is confused and scared by it but after discussions with her virtual assistant appears to eventually grasp the situation - I never did.
But the more I think about the book after I've read it the more I like it. It makes important points about living in an echo chamber, how we need to be careful about passing off control of our own lives, and how much authority we give to artificial voices programmed to guess at what we might want.
I loved the storyline and the tech and I had a lot of sympathy for Freya but I felt like it was hard to get a grasp on the world. It stopped it from being a truly immersive book for me.