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kafkay 's review for:
Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World
by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Getting the obvious out of the way, this was not as good as the first book. But that isn’t to say that it was bad. It was actually really nice, and I did like a lot of things about it.
There were things I disliked too, though. Firstly, why is everyone crying? I have nothing against crying, but someone is tearing up in every chapter. There are definitely strong moments that are really well done. But there are also a lot that don’t feel strong enough but you see tears running down someone’s faces, and at one point it just feels somewhat unrealistic.
And speaking of unrealistic, I had the same issue with the dialogues. The dialogues in the first book flowed really well. And that made me all the more disappointed with the dialogues in this book. Not that they were always bad, a lot of them were amazing and felt great, but some just didn’t feel real. It might be just me, but it’s a lot of impactful lines one after the other, and that does sometimes make them come across as slightly corny.
I think most of the issues I had with the book came down to one thing. It felt like it had too many ‘strong’ moments. And there are a lot of really, really good ones, they made me want to not put down the book. But there seem to be so many of those. It ends up being a constant stream of attempts at powerful scenes, without enough building up to a lot of them. And at times, that just leaves them feeling lacking and unrealistic.
And lastly, I did not like how much of a secondary character Dante was except for being the guy Ari loves.
But overall, it was a good book. Not something I regret reading at all. I really liked the ideas and concepts it talked about. How it explored complicated feelings, how we tend to not see people as people, how comforting silence can be- it was great reading about it all. Would say it is worth reading despite its shortcomings.
There were things I disliked too, though. Firstly, why is everyone crying? I have nothing against crying, but someone is tearing up in every chapter. There are definitely strong moments that are really well done. But there are also a lot that don’t feel strong enough but you see tears running down someone’s faces, and at one point it just feels somewhat unrealistic.
And speaking of unrealistic, I had the same issue with the dialogues. The dialogues in the first book flowed really well. And that made me all the more disappointed with the dialogues in this book. Not that they were always bad, a lot of them were amazing and felt great, but some just didn’t feel real. It might be just me, but it’s a lot of impactful lines one after the other, and that does sometimes make them come across as slightly corny.
I think most of the issues I had with the book came down to one thing. It felt like it had too many ‘strong’ moments. And there are a lot of really, really good ones, they made me want to not put down the book. But there seem to be so many of those. It ends up being a constant stream of attempts at powerful scenes, without enough building up to a lot of them. And at times, that just leaves them feeling lacking and unrealistic.
And lastly, I did not like how much of a secondary character Dante was except for being the guy Ari loves.
But overall, it was a good book. Not something I regret reading at all. I really liked the ideas and concepts it talked about. How it explored complicated feelings, how we tend to not see people as people, how comforting silence can be- it was great reading about it all. Would say it is worth reading despite its shortcomings.