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A review by makeshiftproject
Running by Cara Hoffman
2.0
This is going to be a lengthy review because I am writing this purely fuelled by my spite and hatred for this particular book.
The only reason I gave this book 2 stars was because I thought it had an interesting premise and it had a decent plot. The characters were fleshed out decently (at best), and I felt like I understood them 30% of the time, but Cara had to go and ruin everything good that was set out because she wanted to be quirky.
First and foremost the POV bounces every chapter are so painfully confusing it actually hurt my head to read this book. Not only do we switch character to character every single chapter, the time, setting, and location change with literally no warning. For an entire portion of the book I believed I was reading a chapter centred around the present only to realise we were actually far in the past. At first I believed that I needed to read the book again, it was possibly my fault that I wasn't picking up what the hell was going on and I probably wasn't reading into it critically enough. Upon further inspection I discovered that either I'm incredibly stupid or Cara has no clue how to go about consistently changing timelines. There were points in time where the only indication we were in the past would be a certain character being there.
These constant time changes were really irritating to deal with as I had to keep going back and forth like some detective trying to figure out what was going on, and this is not a mystery book so I shouldn't have to be doing all that. As well as having to figure out what the hell was going on with all the characters. In the very first page we are told that a Jasper died shortly before Birdy returned to Athens, but imagine my suprise when I was told that Jasper was present with them in a chapter I believed to have been set after he died. Also this is quite minor but I had absolutely no clue how old anybody was during any point in time, which was really frustrating whenever I was trying to piece together what was going. I could tell that most of the chapters in Milo's perspective were set in the 'present' but I just wasn't able to tell how far back Athens was.
Another thing that irked me was how the relationships in this book were set out. In the book we are told that Birdy fell in love with Milo, but it was quite frankly never shown to us. In fact I would argue that we were never shown any interactions between the two other than those few chapters prior to Jaspers death. I would go further and argue that Jasper was quite literally the backbone within the friendship, and maybe I didn't understand the bones of Birdy and Milo's 'love' that we were given, but I would say that it felt like Birdy and Milo were two mutual friends that only stayed together due to Jasper. Jasper and Milo also made me mad the entire book, perhaps I'm reading into it too deeply but there is no way in hell that Cara wrote their relationship and expected me to believe those two were in love?? Half of their interactions was either them sleeping together, arguing, or fighting. It was mentioned many times that Milo was quite literally ashamed to be in love with Jasper. Also Milo barely ever mentioned Jasper in his chapters despite it being shoved down our throats that they were in love, all he ever did was try to look for Birdy. I will come out and say that I thought he was doing this because she was the only one between the three of them that was alive, but all of a sudden we find out Milo and Navas relationship also pissed me off right through the ENTIRE BOOK. Every scene that they were together in made me want to shut the fucking book and move onto better things. A student living with her professor first of all?? Who in the world would allow that to happen? Navas consistently talking down on him for no absolute reason through the entire book, I could not count how many times she seemed to talk smack about the most unnecessary things that could ever exist.
I'm not American so maybe I don't fully understand the systems of educations that go on there, but I did not understand what Milo did at his job. All he seemed to do was whine about how much he missed Birdy, ask Navas for Four Loko (what even is that??) talk about how the kids he taught would never understand how difficult life could be (WHAT DOES HE EVEN TEACH??) Say that his students poetry is terrible and then turn around and never offer advice because you need to be poor and struggle to write good poetry so these privileged white kids dont stand a chance.
Whilst I'm at it I really did not understand why the characters seemed to alienate Jasper so much, sure he could of been a bit more empathetic when it came to certain things but most of the time he was just trying to help the group survive and he was treated like a monster for it. I understand that it's a crime and morally wrong to steal peoples passports and sell them, but he only did it to people he knew would be able to get new ones AND he was just trying to make money so he could get the whole group out of living in the literal ghetto of Athens working an unreliable and risky job. Milo made him seem like a villian for lying to the police to try and protect them, when Milo never came forward to tell them his side because he was too busy acting like some pussy with morals. Also whilst I'm on the topic of things I didn't understand can somebody tell me how they were linked to the terrorist attack?? All they did was sell some passports.
Anyway I have quite a few bones to pick with this book but they're all pretty insignificant so I'll end it there. My only real takeaway from this book is that Jasper deserved to be more than some meaningless death (Why did he even die?? It didn't drive anyone to do anything, he might as well have stayed alive) and Milo is some chicken who acts like he's a good person but can't do the right thing to save his damn life. Birdy was alright I guess. Maybe I need to read this book again in a few years and then I'll understand but for now I will stay a proud hate
The only reason I gave this book 2 stars was because I thought it had an interesting premise and it had a decent plot. The characters were fleshed out decently (at best), and I felt like I understood them 30% of the time, but Cara had to go and ruin everything good that was set out because she wanted to be quirky.
First and foremost the POV bounces every chapter are so painfully confusing it actually hurt my head to read this book. Not only do we switch character to character every single chapter, the time, setting, and location change with literally no warning. For an entire portion of the book I believed I was reading a chapter centred around the present only to realise we were actually far in the past. At first I believed that I needed to read the book again, it was possibly my fault that I wasn't picking up what the hell was going on and I probably wasn't reading into it critically enough. Upon further inspection I discovered that either I'm incredibly stupid or Cara has no clue how to go about consistently changing timelines. There were points in time where the only indication we were in the past would be a certain character being there.
These constant time changes were really irritating to deal with as I had to keep going back and forth like some detective trying to figure out what was going on, and this is not a mystery book so I shouldn't have to be doing all that. As well as having to figure out what the hell was going on with all the characters. In the very first page we are told that a Jasper died shortly before Birdy returned to Athens, but imagine my suprise when I was told that Jasper was present with them in a chapter I believed to have been set after he died. Also this is quite minor but I had absolutely no clue how old anybody was during any point in time, which was really frustrating whenever I was trying to piece together what was going. I could tell that most of the chapters in Milo's perspective were set in the 'present' but I just wasn't able to tell how far back Athens was.
Another thing that irked me was how the relationships in this book were set out. In the book we are told that Birdy fell in love with Milo, but it was quite frankly never shown to us. In fact I would argue that we were never shown any interactions between the two other than those few chapters prior to Jaspers death. I would go further and argue that Jasper was quite literally the backbone within the friendship, and maybe I didn't understand the bones of Birdy and Milo's 'love' that we were given, but I would say that it felt like Birdy and Milo were two mutual friends that only stayed together due to Jasper. Jasper and Milo also made me mad the entire book, perhaps I'm reading into it too deeply but there is no way in hell that Cara wrote their relationship and expected me to believe those two were in love?? Half of their interactions was either them sleeping together, arguing, or fighting. It was mentioned many times that Milo was quite literally ashamed to be in love with Jasper. Also Milo barely ever mentioned Jasper in his chapters despite it being shoved down our throats that they were in love, all he ever did was try to look for Birdy. I will come out and say that I thought he was doing this because she was the only one between the three of them that was alive, but all of a sudden we find out
Spoiler
that she has a fucking child with him?? Seriously when did they even sleep togetherI'm not American so maybe I don't fully understand the systems of educations that go on there, but I did not understand what Milo did at his job. All he seemed to do was whine about how much he missed Birdy, ask Navas for Four Loko (what even is that??) talk about how the kids he taught would never understand how difficult life could be (WHAT DOES HE EVEN TEACH??) Say that his students poetry is terrible and then turn around and never offer advice because you need to be poor and struggle to write good poetry so these privileged white kids dont stand a chance.
Whilst I'm at it I really did not understand why the characters seemed to alienate Jasper so much, sure he could of been a bit more empathetic when it came to certain things but most of the time he was just trying to help the group survive and he was treated like a monster for it. I understand that it's a crime and morally wrong to steal peoples passports and sell them, but he only did it to people he knew would be able to get new ones AND he was just trying to make money so he could get the whole group out of living in the literal ghetto of Athens working an unreliable and risky job. Milo made him seem like a villian for lying to the police to try and protect them, when Milo never came forward to tell them his side because he was too busy acting like some pussy with morals. Also whilst I'm on the topic of things I didn't understand can somebody tell me how they were linked to the terrorist attack?? All they did was sell some passports.
Anyway I have quite a few bones to pick with this book but they're all pretty insignificant so I'll end it there. My only real takeaway from this book is that Jasper deserved to be more than some meaningless death (Why did he even die?? It didn't drive anyone to do anything, he might as well have stayed alive) and Milo is some chicken who acts like he's a good person but can't do the right thing to save his damn life. Birdy was alright I guess. Maybe I need to read this book again in a few years and then I'll understand but for now I will stay a proud hate