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A review by geraldine
Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
contains quite possibly the only likeable call of duty-playing star wars audiobook-reading character to ever exist, managing this is quite a feat, jason i don't know how you did it
found this gripping immediately from the first two pages, the way he described her going to that weird telepathy meeting really worked for me. i genuinely liked his writing style and thought it worked! i also thought he did a good job both of setting up the mystery and also setting up its red herrings but then bringing it all back together in the end, i felt like it was well constructed all around. i was texting a friend about it as i was reading like "i'm not sure how he's going to pull this all together because there's a couple threads left hanging" but he did actually do it in away that felt intentional and planned.
i found mallory herself very compelling as a character though i am curious about how she reads to someone who has struggled with addiction themselves!! and i really liked the sequence where it draws a parallel to mallory's moment of distracted driving with anya's moment of distracted painting and how accidents can always happen and it really does just take a moment. and how many other distracted near misses have you had in your life? i thought this really worked and was compassionate though i'm very curious as to how my book club feels here. i'm leading the meeting and i'm glad i picked this one because i think there's a lot to discuss.
also mr rekulak clearly has met a teen girl before because beth and her friends seemed very real to me. her friend and her eating gummy spaghetti in the back of the car really worked for me and i thought was a really great image and effective scene
teddy also feels like a real child, not too cutesy or twee, just a kid in what ends up being yknow.... a pretty fucked up situation. i'm still on the fence about the twist though, it was definitely set up and foreshadowed but i think it can be taken a bunch of different ways and some of those are offensive. like are you trying to say that even a young child can have a fully formed gender identity and even if someone says otherwise they'll still feel the same way? or are you trying to say something about like trans identity being a deception as this is how caroline is basically using it for teddy? it is true that sometimes people hide terrible things they've done/are doing by co-opting progressive language but it's hard to judge whether the author is going for this angle or whether he thinks trans kids are being harmed by being allowed to freely live as who they are.
this last point also makes me think of the scene where caroline tells mallory that she's bought teddy books on sex-ed and mallory questions the books' content, to me this read like the strawman critique on sex-ed in schools, where people claim that schools are going to teach five year olds about explicit sex instead of just like, appropriate language to talk about their bodies and enough information to be able to recognize and communicate harm. i know it's setting up the reveal that caroline is making teddy live as a boy but it really just feels off to me and makes me question the reasoning behind that entire plot point. this honestly would have been an easy 4 star book aside from this specifically, it really rubbed me the wrong way.
namedropping heir to the jedi as the book he was reading was probably one of the most benign books he could have had. now, if he had been reading maul lockdown while playing COD on his phone.......................................
i found mallory herself very compelling as a character though i am curious about how she reads to someone who has struggled with addiction themselves!! and i really liked the sequence where it draws a parallel to mallory's moment of distracted driving with anya's moment of distracted painting and how accidents can always happen and it really does just take a moment. and how many other distracted near misses have you had in your life? i thought this really worked and was compassionate though i'm very curious as to how my book club feels here. i'm leading the meeting and i'm glad i picked this one because i think there's a lot to discuss.
also mr rekulak clearly has met a teen girl before because beth and her friends seemed very real to me. her friend and her eating gummy spaghetti in the back of the car really worked for me and i thought was a really great image and effective scene
teddy also feels like a real child, not too cutesy or twee, just a kid in what ends up being yknow.... a pretty fucked up situation. i'm still on the fence about the twist though, it was definitely set up and foreshadowed but i think it can be taken a bunch of different ways and some of those are offensive. like are you trying to say that even a young child can have a fully formed gender identity and even if someone says otherwise they'll still feel the same way? or are you trying to say something about like trans identity being a deception as this is how caroline is basically using it for teddy? it is true that sometimes people hide terrible things they've done/are doing by co-opting progressive language but it's hard to judge whether the author is going for this angle or whether he thinks trans kids are being harmed by being allowed to freely live as who they are.
this last point also makes me think of the scene where caroline tells mallory that she's bought teddy books on sex-ed and mallory questions the books' content, to me this read like the strawman critique on sex-ed in schools, where people claim that schools are going to teach five year olds about explicit sex instead of just like, appropriate language to talk about their bodies and enough information to be able to recognize and communicate harm. i know it's setting up the reveal that caroline is making teddy live as a boy but it really just feels off to me and makes me question the reasoning behind that entire plot point. this honestly would have been an easy 4 star book aside from this specifically, it really rubbed me the wrong way.
namedropping heir to the jedi as the book he was reading was probably one of the most benign books he could have had. now, if he had been reading maul lockdown while playing COD on his phone.......................................