A review by ladymab
Tripping Arcadia by Kit Mayquist

dark tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I really wanted to like this book but all the characters felt like stock items to be set dressing and none of them had any influence on the motivations or plot of Lena -- not even the siblings, at least not until halfway through the book. Lena hardly spoke to anyone and kept in an internal narration for most of it which made it very hard to get to know anyone. I get the unreliable narrator,
especially because she prefaces the story with "i killed this whole family" only for you to realize what specifically that means by the end
but at the same time it's also like i couldn't even understand her own motivations. lena wafted back and forth a lot on why she was doing what she was doing where sometimes she would make a choice and I'd be like "wait why are you acting like this". 

I felt like there were two different versions of this book that got chopped together to form this final version. Either one would have been good but together they didn't mesh well in a way that i could enjoy. I WANTED to like it, and once you finally start getting actual conversations with the siblings they're interesting (if shallow) characters. But otherwise it was a bit "shrugs shoulders". 
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