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tyaravazhi 's review for:
When Haru Was Here
by Dustin Thao
I was excited for this book and was so primed to fall in love with it, and it ended up being quite disappointing.
It has all the right elements, but it was so disorganized and lacked depth where it was desperately needed.
Specifically, there’s very little meaningful character growth or development in as story that’s meant to be about grief. And for a book with one of the main characters named in the title, we sure don’t get much from “Haru.”
The plot suffers from too many things going on and also works unnaturally hard to obfuscate certain details to clear the way for a “plot twist.”
Honestly difficult for me to come down so hard on this because I genuinely wanted to love it.
A very similar story that I felt does a much better job of covering this subject matter is Robbie Couch’s “Another First Chance.” Incidentally, also published this year…and the cover also has a similar color story.
It has all the right elements, but it was so disorganized and lacked depth where it was desperately needed.
Specifically, there’s very little meaningful character growth or development in as story that’s meant to be about grief. And for a book with one of the main characters named in the title, we sure don’t get much from “Haru.”
The plot suffers from too many things going on and also works unnaturally hard to obfuscate certain details to clear the way for a “plot twist.”
Honestly difficult for me to come down so hard on this because I genuinely wanted to love it.
A very similar story that I felt does a much better job of covering this subject matter is Robbie Couch’s “Another First Chance.” Incidentally, also published this year…and the cover also has a similar color story.