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A review by squids_can_read
888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers by Abraham Chang
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Young loves numbers. And I mean really loves numbers. They are his life and his heart. They are what keeps him moving. When his uncle tells him that everyone has seven great loves, Young takes that to heart. But when Young meets Erena, he thinks that she's the one but she is only love number six. Now Young is trying to make this work, while also keeping his love of numbers alive.
I think this book really shines in the characters. I liked the way that almost all of the characters were neurodivergent in different ways. Young's connection with numbers is really interesting and I really enjoyed how it was written. I did think that his obsession with God was a little strange but I marked that down as something his family instilled in him. A reason wasn't really given but that's what I ascribed it to. Erena was a character, to say the least. I actually really liked her when she was speaking like a normal person. For every paragraph, she said it seemed like Young said maybe a sentence. Also, the way that she spoke was extremely off-putting and I didn't enjoy reading it. It was actually difficult for me to read through her dialogue and understand what she was saying. The other supporting characters were written really well. I liked how we got enough to understand who they were but not every detail of their lives because we didn't need it.
The overall plot of the book was okay. Young is trying to keep this love of his while the reader learns about his past loves. The ending of the book made me really disappointed. The actual last chapter was fine but the epilogue was really annoying. It's split into three different endings which makes it almost like a choose-your-own story. However, these are all ways that Young's life could have gone. It seemed really unnecessary and I would have liked the book to end at the last chapter and have no epilogue at all.
I did get an ARC copy of this so I don't know if this was changed in the final copy but there were almost no dialogue tags. This makes the book really hard to read because it doesn't even have a dialogue tag for the first-person talking. You just have to figure it out. It's also hard when someone is on a rant and the author breaks up the speech. This is because there are still no dialogue tags but the dialogue continues to a different paragraph. So in order to understand the dialogue you have to really pay attention, which I don't think is a terrible thing but it made it really hard for me especially since the way that the characters talked already made it hard for me to understand what they were saying.
I think this book really shines in the characters. I liked the way that almost all of the characters were neurodivergent in different ways. Young's connection with numbers is really interesting and I really enjoyed how it was written. I did think that his obsession with God was a little strange but I marked that down as something his family instilled in him. A reason wasn't really given but that's what I ascribed it to. Erena was a character, to say the least. I actually really liked her when she was speaking like a normal person. For every paragraph, she said it seemed like Young said maybe a sentence. Also, the way that she spoke was extremely off-putting and I didn't enjoy reading it. It was actually difficult for me to read through her dialogue and understand what she was saying. The other supporting characters were written really well. I liked how we got enough to understand who they were but not every detail of their lives because we didn't need it.
The overall plot of the book was okay. Young is trying to keep this love of his while the reader learns about his past loves. The ending of the book made me really disappointed. The actual last chapter was fine but the epilogue was really annoying. It's split into three different endings which makes it almost like a choose-your-own story. However, these are all ways that Young's life could have gone. It seemed really unnecessary and I would have liked the book to end at the last chapter and have no epilogue at all.
I did get an ARC copy of this so I don't know if this was changed in the final copy but there were almost no dialogue tags. This makes the book really hard to read because it doesn't even have a dialogue tag for the first-person talking. You just have to figure it out. It's also hard when someone is on a rant and the author breaks up the speech. This is because there are still no dialogue tags but the dialogue continues to a different paragraph. So in order to understand the dialogue you have to really pay attention, which I don't think is a terrible thing but it made it really hard for me especially since the way that the characters talked already made it hard for me to understand what they were saying.