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cdharriman 's review for:
Bridge
by Lauren Beukes
Was lucky enough to win an ARC of this one. I've read and enjoyed Broken Monsters, and have bought a couple of Lauren Beukes' other novels without getting to them yet, making this my second read by this author.
Our main character Bridget (Bridge) and her best friend Dom are visiting the home of her recently deceased estranged mother. We have some hints that Bridge had, lets say, an interesting childhood, and a strange and difficult relationship with her mother. Thankfully, she's mostly resolved this in therapy, until a discovery in the house throws everything she thought she understood about her own past into question. The book wastes no time in launching into it's sci-fi elements and had me intrigued pretty quickly. It's laid out on the back of the book, so it's no spoiler to say we're soon following multiple plot threads and characters, in multiple realities, and wondering how they're going to come together. Around the 3/4 mark the action kicks up, I found it pretty easy to marathon through to the end on a mercifully slow night at work. Overall, a very satisfying read. It might still take me a while but I'm bumping up The Shining Girls and Afterland on my TBR list. What quibbles I did have, are minor.
Dom is a very easy to like character, and had a couple great fist-pump kind of moments towards the end, but there were a couple moments where I sort of questioned if their motivations and actions were lining up completely--where I might have expected a stronger or more emphatic response from them. Also, the amount of dreamworm our main characters have, and the eventual necessity of somehow finding more, seemed at moments to be in the forefront of our main characters minds, and then at times would sort of fall out the narrative, and just no longer seem like a problem for a while. One final thing I'm going to speak deliberately vaguely about, but will still put behind a spoiler tag, as it involves a characters motivations that aren't revealed until later:
Still a book I'd recommend--and very cool to have a chance to read it before everyone else, grateful to the author and publisher for the opportunity.
Our main character Bridget (Bridge) and her best friend Dom are visiting the home of her recently deceased estranged mother. We have some hints that Bridge had, lets say, an interesting childhood, and a strange and difficult relationship with her mother. Thankfully, she's mostly resolved this in therapy, until a discovery in the house throws everything she thought she understood about her own past into question. The book wastes no time in launching into it's sci-fi elements and had me intrigued pretty quickly. It's laid out on the back of the book, so it's no spoiler to say we're soon following multiple plot threads and characters, in multiple realities, and wondering how they're going to come together. Around the 3/4 mark the action kicks up, I found it pretty easy to marathon through to the end on a mercifully slow night at work. Overall, a very satisfying read. It might still take me a while but I'm bumping up The Shining Girls and Afterland on my TBR list. What quibbles I did have, are minor.
Dom is a very easy to like character, and had a couple great fist-pump kind of moments towards the end, but there were a couple moments where I sort of questioned if their motivations and actions were lining up completely--where I might have expected a stronger or more emphatic response from them. Also, the amount of dreamworm our main characters have, and the eventual necessity of somehow finding more, seemed at moments to be in the forefront of our main characters minds, and then at times would sort of fall out the narrative, and just no longer seem like a problem for a while. One final thing I'm going to speak deliberately vaguely about, but will still put behind a spoiler tag, as it involves a characters motivations that aren't revealed until later:
Spoiler
Jo's motivations for using the dreamworm are revealed in the end, and I think it's meant to feel like a surprise. At some point around half way through maybe, I assumed these motivations correctly, and when I reached this point I kind of had to remind myself, oh right, her daughter, Bridge hasn't actually put this together yet--this is a surprise to her. I'm not sure if other readers will have my experience, but without the text making it explicit, it seemed pretty clear what she was looking for, at least to me, and this may have deflated in a small way, the impact of these scenes at the end.Still a book I'd recommend--and very cool to have a chance to read it before everyone else, grateful to the author and publisher for the opportunity.