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A review by rakoerose
What's Left of Me by Kat Zhang
4.0
The Reading Rush 2019: Author’s Debut ✓
I could even understand, in the most rational parts of me, why people like Addie and me couldn’t, on the whole, be allowed free rein. But understanding a thing and accepting it are so very different things.
To fully articulate how much I adored this book when I was younger is impossible to do. It really set up a basis of me loving stories that focus on consciousness and memories. It is one of the defining books that I kept in a treasured pile of favorites from my elementary and middle school days.
Now that I’ve reread it as I’m older, I’m more aware of the small flaws in What’s Left of Me but those flaws didn’t really hinder my enjoyment. It didn’t hinder my memories of picking this book up from a school book fair and loving it so much that I tried to make my sister read it as well (which she dnf’ed at 29 pages - I don’t blame her, we all have different book tastes).
I can understand how others may have found this confusing to read - when you’re dealing with more than one consciousness in the same narrator, it’s bound to be a bumpy ride. But I have never struggled any times I’ve read this with keeping their dialogues distinct. I feel that their personalities are different enough to keep them as their own characters: which is the point.
The one thing past me didn’t do: realize this was a series. So now I guess I have to forge ahead into the next ones - who knows, maybe the rest of this is just as great as the first one!
The Reading Rush Reviews 2019
1. Vidia and the Fairy Crown ~ Laura Driscoll ★★★★
2. Oxygen Level Zero ~ Sigmund Brouwer ★★★★★
3. What’s Left of Me ~ Kat Zhang ★★★★
4. The Kingdom ~ Jess Rothenberg ★★★★
5. Catching Fire ~ Suzanne Collins ★★★★★
6. The Paradise Snare ~ A.C. Crispin ★★★★
7. The Big Adventures of Majoko, Vol 3 ~ Tomomi Mizuna ★★★★
I could even understand, in the most rational parts of me, why people like Addie and me couldn’t, on the whole, be allowed free rein. But understanding a thing and accepting it are so very different things.
To fully articulate how much I adored this book when I was younger is impossible to do. It really set up a basis of me loving stories that focus on consciousness and memories. It is one of the defining books that I kept in a treasured pile of favorites from my elementary and middle school days.
Now that I’ve reread it as I’m older, I’m more aware of the small flaws in What’s Left of Me but those flaws didn’t really hinder my enjoyment. It didn’t hinder my memories of picking this book up from a school book fair and loving it so much that I tried to make my sister read it as well (which she dnf’ed at 29 pages - I don’t blame her, we all have different book tastes).
I can understand how others may have found this confusing to read - when you’re dealing with more than one consciousness in the same narrator, it’s bound to be a bumpy ride. But I have never struggled any times I’ve read this with keeping their dialogues distinct. I feel that their personalities are different enough to keep them as their own characters: which is the point.
The one thing past me didn’t do: realize this was a series. So now I guess I have to forge ahead into the next ones - who knows, maybe the rest of this is just as great as the first one!
The Reading Rush Reviews 2019
1. Vidia and the Fairy Crown ~ Laura Driscoll ★★★★
2. Oxygen Level Zero ~ Sigmund Brouwer ★★★★★
3. What’s Left of Me ~ Kat Zhang ★★★★
4. The Kingdom ~ Jess Rothenberg ★★★★
5. Catching Fire ~ Suzanne Collins ★★★★★
6. The Paradise Snare ~ A.C. Crispin ★★★★
7. The Big Adventures of Majoko, Vol 3 ~ Tomomi Mizuna ★★★★