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jfranco77 's review for:
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
by Claire North
What is perfection? What is identity? What is this book?
Hope Arden is un-rememberable. Anyone who sees her will forget her 30 seconds after they've stopped looking at her. Then when they see her again, they have no recollection of seeing her, and wonder why she's there. It wasn't always that way - when she was a teenager, it started slowly, until she was eventually forgotten by everyone including her parents.
As you can imagine, this makes things really difficult. Even basic things like school, renting an apartment, medical care, or getting a job. So she is mostly a thief. She can walk right up to someone, take their wallet and walk away, and even if the person catches her, they won't remember why. Cameras can still see her, but it's hard to arrest someone when you will eventually see them in jail and not remember putting them there.
Someone she cares about commits suicide. Hope steals a necklace from a posh hotel in Dubai. It turns out that it's all wrapped up in something called "Perfection" that is a lifestyle app taken to extremes. It tells you what to eat, what to wear, where to go, and gives you points when you do it. Then Hope meets someone named Byron who wants to destroy Perfection. Hope kind of wants that too. Sort of. Mild spoiler: So there's a whole cat and mouse game between Hope and Byron, and how they can accomplish their goal. And a lot of hand wringing about whether they should.
There are like 3 books here. There's a lot of social commentary on what it means to be perfect and what it means to be alone. There's the book about Hope and how she manages her life. There's, to steal a catchphrase, Hope and Byron's relentless pursuit of Perfection.
I really enjoyed the book about Hope. How she survives and how she manages to live. The other two, I was a lot less sure about. I know Claire North doesn't really do "light and fluffy" but there were a lot of times when this book was WAY too heavy.
Hope Arden is un-rememberable. Anyone who sees her will forget her 30 seconds after they've stopped looking at her. Then when they see her again, they have no recollection of seeing her, and wonder why she's there. It wasn't always that way - when she was a teenager, it started slowly, until she was eventually forgotten by everyone including her parents.
As you can imagine, this makes things really difficult. Even basic things like school, renting an apartment, medical care, or getting a job. So she is mostly a thief. She can walk right up to someone, take their wallet and walk away, and even if the person catches her, they won't remember why. Cameras can still see her, but it's hard to arrest someone when you will eventually see them in jail and not remember putting them there.
Someone she cares about commits suicide. Hope steals a necklace from a posh hotel in Dubai. It turns out that it's all wrapped up in something called "Perfection" that is a lifestyle app taken to extremes. It tells you what to eat, what to wear, where to go, and gives you points when you do it. Then Hope meets someone named Byron who wants to destroy Perfection. Hope kind of wants that too. Sort of. Mild spoiler:
Spoiler
But she also met someone like her, and they became memorable through Perfection, so maybe not? Does Hope want to be memorable? Or not?There are like 3 books here. There's a lot of social commentary on what it means to be perfect and what it means to be alone. There's the book about Hope and how she manages her life. There's, to steal a catchphrase, Hope and Byron's relentless pursuit of Perfection.
I really enjoyed the book about Hope. How she survives and how she manages to live. The other two, I was a lot less sure about. I know Claire North doesn't really do "light and fluffy" but there were a lot of times when this book was WAY too heavy.