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A review by despina19
Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
I was all in for a story about family and grief and anticipated many layers to this story.
I have only DNF’d 1 book prior to this, ever.
For me, this seemed like it was intentionally confusing. It doesn’t make sense…how does post-partum depression survive an apocalypse? Where there aren’t any humans left? Are these Coral’s strange thoughts because she’s her lost sense of what is real vs what she writes about in her fictional work? Why do her friends want to eat her flesh? Why does she want them to turn into bats and shit all over the patrons at the restaurant they are at?
I am all for writers keeping you guessing for as much of the novel that is needed to tell the story their way, but after 40 pages, I should understand SOMETHING about this section - “we understand a part of what Coral had to do. We have had to be many kinds of people across many points of history, or, in Coral’s case, the future.” What?!
And while the book within the book is a feature that always piques my interest, it seems like the writer wanted to make points about greed, guns and humans wanting too much and is sacrificing the story to do it.
Some of the sentences are pretty, but for me, I couldn’t justify continuing. I skimmed further and could tell it continues this way, and I promised myself I would DNF if something isn’t working for me because there are so many great books that will work for me out there. Maybe this will work for someone else.
I have only DNF’d 1 book prior to this, ever.
For me, this seemed like it was intentionally confusing. It doesn’t make sense…how does post-partum depression survive an apocalypse? Where there aren’t any humans left? Are these Coral’s strange thoughts because she’s her lost sense of what is real vs what she writes about in her fictional work? Why do her friends want to eat her flesh? Why does she want them to turn into bats and shit all over the patrons at the restaurant they are at?
I am all for writers keeping you guessing for as much of the novel that is needed to tell the story their way, but after 40 pages, I should understand SOMETHING about this section - “we understand a part of what Coral had to do. We have had to be many kinds of people across many points of history, or, in Coral’s case, the future.” What?!
And while the book within the book is a feature that always piques my interest, it seems like the writer wanted to make points about greed, guns and humans wanting too much and is sacrificing the story to do it.
Some of the sentences are pretty, but for me, I couldn’t justify continuing. I skimmed further and could tell it continues this way, and I promised myself I would DNF if something isn’t working for me because there are so many great books that will work for me out there. Maybe this will work for someone else.