A review by thepiqht
Another Faust by Dina Nayeri, Daniel Nayeri

3.0

I am forever apologies, but do you speak of moving picture show?

No, the book is not written like that (thank god), but it's just a little quote that made me fall completely and irrevocably in love with Bicé. Which is kind of odd since the whole book is meant to be about the ugliness of human nature, more on that in the third part of my review. On the whole review topic, how the hell does this have such negative reviews? Like yeah it has it's flaws but it wasn't that bad.

Things that Made Me Smile!

✓ The Sheer Wrongness

It's no secret that I adore antagonists, villains and just generally dreadful people; and so this book was right up my alley. The way these kids manipulated and tormented others around them, while getting manipulated and tormented themselves by their governess, made for a conflicted mindset. Do I feel sorry for them or not?

✓ The Powers

Some of the powers were so originally new? Like alright, reading people's minds and being beautiful is kind of cliché but the whole rewinding time thing? That was pretty damn cool, it wasn't even the power it was just how it was shown and not told. There were lovely little scenes that showed Valentin being utterly terrible to everyone around him only to fix it instantly without lifting a finger. Although, there was also a scene where he kind of helped out an 'uncool' person? That was kind of cute even though he didn't do it for the right reasons.

✓ Christian's Struggles

Okay, that looks weird when I type it like that. What I mean to say, is that I love how they humanise Christian with his interactions with buddy and his desperation to write. Yeah, I guess it wasn't extremely faustian but it made him more realistic than Belle (but also, she barely got any time outside of Thomas. Like ??? Is she not a character in her own right.)

Things that Made Me Frown(?)

✖︎ The Happy Ending

The book that this was based on was all about the ugly side of human nature, a side that isn't hard to find when you enter high school. Apparently this high school was an exception. Honestly, the characters in this could have been so much more grotesque than they actually were (I know this is kind of contradicting my first point, what I'm saying is that though it was nice – it didn't really follow the theme of the original. AKA the thing that it's liTERAlly named after).