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sam_reads25 's review for:
When Haru Was Here
by Dustin Thao
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.
Thao gave the people what they wanted. “When Haru Was Here” is a sad story, just like his previous novel. The issue is that it feels forced. I feel like (no hate to Thao) but he saw how the public responded to “You’ve Reached Sam” and decided he needed to make a book that discusses the same themes of grief and loss. And I think by doing this Thao didn't create something that he was truly passionate about creating. But I digress.
Onto the flaws of the book. The characters are dull, and this is an issue that can easily be fixed by simply adding more chapters. This would cause many of the events in the story to hit the reader SO MUCH harder because they will have a far deeper emotional connection to the characters. After all, two chapters are not enough.
Another issue is that Haru is an incredibly unexplored character, which I found made trying to fall in love with him difficult, because both me and the MC basically only know that his family owns a stationary store. This is an issue, because it really took away from how much I cared when things would happen between Eric(MC) and Haru
And, my final complaint, because I apparently woke up today and chose to be hypercritical is the sentence structure. Never before when reading a book have I ever been triggered by sentence structure, but there is an over abundance of simple sentences. And it made it incredibly choppy to read.
All in all, this book is getting a 2-star rating, due to it feeling like this should be the first draft.
Again, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher.
Thao gave the people what they wanted. “When Haru Was Here” is a sad story, just like his previous novel. The issue is that it feels forced. I feel like (no hate to Thao) but he saw how the public responded to “You’ve Reached Sam” and decided he needed to make a book that discusses the same themes of grief and loss. And I think by doing this Thao didn't create something that he was truly passionate about creating. But I digress.
Onto the flaws of the book. The characters are dull, and this is an issue that can easily be fixed by simply adding more chapters. This would cause many of the events in the story to hit the reader SO MUCH harder because they will have a far deeper emotional connection to the characters. After all, two chapters are not enough.
Another issue is that Haru is an incredibly unexplored character, which I found made trying to fall in love with him difficult, because both me and the MC basically only know that his family owns a stationary store. This is an issue, because it really took away from how much I cared when things would happen between Eric(MC) and Haru
And, my final complaint, because I apparently woke up today and chose to be hypercritical is the sentence structure. Never before when reading a book have I ever been triggered by sentence structure, but there is an over abundance of simple sentences. And it made it incredibly choppy to read.
All in all, this book is getting a 2-star rating, due to it feeling like this should be the first draft.
Again, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher.