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giorgia_porge 's review for:
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
by Marisha Pessl
2.5 ish
The story, the ideas for the characters were good and had a lot of potential.
At times the writing was very well crafted. Some parts were more page-turners than others for these reasons. But it started becoming frustrating when I realized that every time something interesting seemed to be on the verege of happening, it went on to be unresolved, thrown out of the window to suddenly move on to something else.
- - - - - Spoilers ahead - - - - -
I didn't love it as much as I wanted to.
The main issue I have with it is the Bluebloods, these characters had potential but they are actually flat, uninteresting... Which is made worse by the fact that we're talking about unlikable characters.
I love being invested in (or full-on loathe) unlikable characters. However the Bluebloods were just annoying.
Besides the fact that they served just to make Hannah's approach to Blue more subtle and generally be a red herring, disappearing in the last part of the book. Last but not least: although they were supposed to be a tight-knit, back-stabbing group of friends I couldn't really feel that.
The twist... The last part of the book was kind of unexpected, bringing in a cult element? I love THAT. But again it felt underdeveloped. It didn't really motivate much except for some of Gareth actions. And it didn't involve any of the other mains. It barely involved Hannah...
And the fact that Hannah turned into a mere love interest and nothing more, not even worth of having the mistery of her death solved??
Even though I can accept it since the author wrote in the justification for this one criticism (you can move on even if you don't have all the answers in life, sometimes also you get answers to questions you didn't ask).
The weirdly pedantic, supposedly pretentious writing I might have liked, if it hadn't been paired with sloppy characterization and too far-fetched metaphors, that crossed the line between self-indulgent intellectual writing and desperate to show I'm cultured writing. I know it's fitting for the character of Blue, but it wasn't needed, we already got that aspect of the character, and the reading experience suffered.
The story, the ideas for the characters were good and had a lot of potential.
At times the writing was very well crafted. Some parts were more page-turners than others for these reasons. But it started becoming frustrating when I realized that every time something interesting seemed to be on the verege of happening, it went on to be unresolved, thrown out of the window to suddenly move on to something else.
- - - - - Spoilers ahead - - - - -
I didn't love it as much as I wanted to.
The main issue I have with it is the Bluebloods, these characters had potential but they are actually flat, uninteresting... Which is made worse by the fact that we're talking about unlikable characters.
I love being invested in (or full-on loathe) unlikable characters. However the Bluebloods were just annoying.
Besides the fact that they served just to make Hannah's approach to Blue more subtle and generally be a red herring, disappearing in the last part of the book. Last but not least: although they were supposed to be a tight-knit, back-stabbing group of friends I couldn't really feel that.
The twist... The last part of the book was kind of unexpected, bringing in a cult element? I love THAT. But again it felt underdeveloped. It didn't really motivate much except for some of Gareth actions. And it didn't involve any of the other mains. It barely involved Hannah...
And the fact that Hannah turned into a mere love interest and nothing more, not even worth of having the mistery of her death solved??
Even though I can accept it since the author wrote in the justification for this one criticism (you can move on even if you don't have all the answers in life, sometimes also you get answers to questions you didn't ask).
The weirdly pedantic, supposedly pretentious writing I might have liked, if it hadn't been paired with sloppy characterization and too far-fetched metaphors, that crossed the line between self-indulgent intellectual writing and desperate to show I'm cultured writing. I know it's fitting for the character of Blue, but it wasn't needed, we already got that aspect of the character, and the reading experience suffered.