Scan barcode
A review by joannaautumn
Kids of Appetite by David Arnold
2.0
Someone has been reading John Green. Just saying.
What even was this book? Let’s address the elephant in the room.
CAN WE PLEASE LEARN HOW TO WRITE FEMALE CHARACTERS?
Reading this book as a female was very confusing to me.
The main female character doesn’t have a personality. She is a manic pixie dream girl. And that is entirely the fault of the writer because he had material to make her a strong deuteragonist but decided to go on the other route.
Mad is a girl who loves Elliott Smith, reading The Outsiders, hanging out with her friends. And that’s that. Her page time is wasted on seemingly profound conversations with Vic and their love story.
I’ll get to that later
Mad is a victim of domestic abuse. This is a serious thing, one which should have been dealt better, In my opinion. But it was completely pushed aside until 70% of the book.
The characters aren’t really developed
Can you name 3 traits of these characters besides being nice, hurt in life, and outsiders?
They didn’t feel like real people, more like cut-outs from a list of character tropes put on paper.Reminds me of another writer, first name John, surname Green
What will you remember about the characters after you read the book and let’s say five years pass? Nothing.
The love story makes no sense and has zero chemistry
Vic is clearly attracted to Mad, Mad has shown an attraction to Vic, but at what point did it evolve into love? Pay attention to all the passages where Vic idealizes Mad and basically gets high on his idea of her.
And how many times he focuses on her looks vs. how many times he focuses on her personality.
This book has given birth to one of the most cringy YA paragraphs:
***
***
***
And now, behold one of the rare passages where Vic focuses on her personality, who would have thought she has one, considering the abovementioned quotations:
Ooops, Notice how it doesn’t last more than half a page, whilst there are never-ending passages about her physical appearance.
I might be nitpicking but the term she fangirls about the Outsiders is a thorn in my eye. She started talking about her interests, why can’t she get the same level of respect as Vic has from her about his love for art.
Vic is giving me creepy vibes
The events are happening in the duration of a week. A week. 7 days.
Vic manages to fall in love, invade her personal space, stalk her, ask for her picture after 4/5 days of knowing her, etc.
There was a scene where she gives it to him straight:
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing as powerful as a man and his illusions about a woman.
He knows her for 5 days, how the fuck does he know her as a person?? Baffles me.
Let’s talk about the appeal of this book
It has a lot of passages that are appealing to teens. A diverse cast. A love story. It reads fast. It was oriented on the chosen family – friend group. But because of the abovementioned, I really couldn’t enjoy this book.
The only thing that this book did for me is made me interested in reading [b:The Outsiders|231804|The Outsiders|S.E. Hinton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442129426l/231804._SY75_.jpg|1426690] and that’s the tea.
What even was this book? Let’s address the elephant in the room.
CAN WE PLEASE LEARN HOW TO WRITE FEMALE CHARACTERS?
Reading this book as a female was very confusing to me.
The main female character doesn’t have a personality. She is a manic pixie dream girl. And that is entirely the fault of the writer because he had material to make her a strong deuteragonist but decided to go on the other route.
Mad is a girl who loves Elliott Smith, reading The Outsiders, hanging out with her friends. And that’s that. Her page time is wasted on seemingly profound conversations with Vic and their love story.
Mad is a victim of domestic abuse. This is a serious thing, one which should have been dealt better, In my opinion. But it was completely pushed aside until 70% of the book.
The characters aren’t really developed
Can you name 3 traits of these characters besides being nice, hurt in life, and outsiders?
They didn’t feel like real people, more like cut-outs from a list of character tropes put on paper.
What will you remember about the characters after you read the book and let’s say five years pass? Nothing.
The love story makes no sense and has zero chemistry
Vic is clearly attracted to Mad, Mad has shown an attraction to Vic, but at what point did it evolve into love? Pay attention to all the passages where Vic idealizes Mad and basically gets high on his idea of her.
And how many times he focuses on her looks vs. how many times he focuses on her personality.
This book has given birth to one of the most cringy YA paragraphs:
The hair led to the eyes, which led to the lips, which led to the skin, which led to, which led to, which led to . . .
Mad was a map.
And I was Magellan.
***
Here’s what wasn’t a maybe: everything Mad said, every delicate movement she made—from her hair, to her hands, to the way she read a book like it was the last thing on Earth worth doing—was pure verve and value.
If a poem could be a person, it would be Madeline Falco.
***
And I was absolutely blown away by her morning-type beauty. It was altogether different from her evening-type beauty. I don’t know. Mad had many beauties, and some of them were time-sensitive. And all of them made me want to do things I’d never done before.
***
The thing about uniquely pretty girls is that their prettiness cares nothing for time or place. It cannot be rescheduled or relocated. They are pretty wherever they go, whenever they get there. It can be quite distracting. For example: right now, instead of thinking about the best way to hang my dead father from a chandelier, I was thinking about the best way to keep Mad’s hair out of our mouths should we ever kiss. Actually—yeah, never mind. I’d rather her hair get in on the action. Not like it would ever actually happen. Not like someone like her would kiss someone like me.
And now, behold one of the rare passages where Vic focuses on her personality, who would have thought she has one, considering the abovementioned quotations:
Mad spent the next ten minutes talking about The Outsiders. No theories or analytics. Just pure, unadulterated fangirling. In the moonlight, I stared at her lips as they moved in succinct elegance, praising story and character and setting. Apparently, the best characters in The Outsiders valued loyalty above all. And I remembered what Coco said, that if Mad’s “thing” was leaving, her other thing was coming back. I thought maybe loyalty, for Mad, was in the coming back. She recited her favorite quotes, and one of them was something about being so real that you scared people. Mad said she wanted to be that kind of real. I thought I understood. In our many conversations about art, Dad always challenged me to look past “the pretty,” as he called it. He taught me that what really mattered wasn’t beauty, but what drove that beauty, the stuff that bubbled just below the surface. Don’t look at the colors that are there, V, he used to say, pointing to various prints in my Matisse book. Look at the colors that aren’t.
As she continued, hair splashing, lips crashing, heart singing, she spoke of the joys of fiction, and about sinking into fiction, and I imagined sinking with her. I wanted to be part of all things if they were her things.
I wanted to go to Singapore and take her with me.
. . .
And I wanted her lips.
Ooops, Notice how it doesn’t last more than half a page, whilst there are never-ending passages about her physical appearance.
I might be nitpicking but the term she fangirls about the Outsiders is a thorn in my eye. She started talking about her interests, why can’t she get the same level of respect as Vic has from her about his love for art.
Vic is giving me creepy vibes
The events are happening in the duration of a week. A week. 7 days.
Vic manages to fall in love, invade her personal space, stalk her, ask for her picture after 4/5 days of knowing her, etc.
There was a scene where she gives it to him straight:
Well, you don’t really know me.”
Even though the phrase cut like a knife, I found myself entirely content. Mad’s speech was so intentional, I could almost hear the functionality of it, her lips and tongue and teeth operating as one. She spoke so quietly, all these little sentences just for me. The eyes, the sentences, the hair—these pieces that composed the single unit called Mad were astounding. They walked inside my brain, pulled up comfy chairs, and made themselves at home.
“Mad, I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t make out with anyone on impulse.”
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s nothing as powerful as a man and his illusions about a woman.
He knows her for 5 days, how the fuck does he know her as a person?? Baffles me.
Let’s talk about the appeal of this book
It has a lot of passages that are appealing to teens. A diverse cast. A love story. It reads fast. It was oriented on the chosen family – friend group. But because of the abovementioned, I really couldn’t enjoy this book.
The only thing that this book did for me is made me interested in reading [b:The Outsiders|231804|The Outsiders|S.E. Hinton|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442129426l/231804._SY75_.jpg|1426690] and that’s the tea.