You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
oraclereadings 's review for:
Internment
by Samira Ahmed
The concept of this story is very powerful and something that isn’t too far from the reality that we live in. I would have loved for this book to be a favorite, or even a four star read. It just doesn’t have the “umph” that a story like this needs.
I’ve never read any of Ahmed’s books, so it’s hard to say whether I dislike her writing style. For me, it felt like the story was trying too hard to tell about three different plot points. There was the regular young adult plot, and then the dystopian world plot that we would expect from this sort of book. And then there was a mild revolution slash secret spy shit going on. While I understand that that goes in with the situation of the book, it just felt off. Like, we’re supposed to count on a couple of teenagers to start and lead this revolution? With said teenagers also bouncing back and forth between their romantic lives and their families, and spending about 10% of their time on said revolution. I don’t know. Maybe I missed a point, but it just didn’t deliver.
I put half of the blame on our classic, typical, young adult main character. Layla was so selfish in her actions that I physically wanted to scream. Again, end of the world like setting and wanting to resist, good job. I applaud anyone for wanting to do so. But girl, there is a time and place, and putting your family in danger is not the way to go.
Also, this is just a random part that bugged me that I feel the need to address: There is a part in the beginning of the book (so no spoilers) where Layla and her family are entering the camp for the first time. Layla has just smart mouthed a guard or her parents or whatever, I honestly don’t remember that much detail, and then not even a second later she is cutting up jokes and making a new friend with a Doctor Who reference. That’s another thing that I hate in fiction. Not pop culture references, but when those references are just constant and reused over and over.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 2.5 ✰ Listen. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t like it. I got through it, but still just a meh book.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━
I’ve never read any of Ahmed’s books, so it’s hard to say whether I dislike her writing style. For me, it felt like the story was trying too hard to tell about three different plot points. There was the regular young adult plot, and then the dystopian world plot that we would expect from this sort of book. And then there was a mild revolution slash secret spy shit going on. While I understand that that goes in with the situation of the book, it just felt off. Like, we’re supposed to count on a couple of teenagers to start and lead this revolution? With said teenagers also bouncing back and forth between their romantic lives and their families, and spending about 10% of their time on said revolution. I don’t know. Maybe I missed a point, but it just didn’t deliver.
I put half of the blame on our classic, typical, young adult main character. Layla was so selfish in her actions that I physically wanted to scream. Again, end of the world like setting and wanting to resist, good job. I applaud anyone for wanting to do so. But girl, there is a time and place, and putting your family in danger is not the way to go.
Also, this is just a random part that bugged me that I feel the need to address: There is a part in the beginning of the book (so no spoilers) where Layla and her family are entering the camp for the first time. Layla has just smart mouthed a guard or her parents or whatever, I honestly don’t remember that much detail, and then not even a second later she is cutting up jokes and making a new friend with a Doctor Who reference. That’s another thing that I hate in fiction. Not pop culture references, but when those references are just constant and reused over and over.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬
✰ 2.5 ✰ Listen. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t like it. I got through it, but still just a meh book.
━━━━━━━━━━☽✰☾━━━━━━━━━━