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A review by suvoroch
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
3.0
This review will consist only of the first book without any spoilers, so if you are planning to read this duology then read my criticism, i’m trying to be as objective as possible.
Well, all I can say is that the potential was great. I liked the idea, the boys and other characters are nice and cute, but this book has a massive problem which is a poor writing. It is written as primitive as possible, the description of everything is so poor, which leads to another problem of ‘not deep enough’ quotes. The book focuses on many important topics, and the main character is showing us the problems of young boys growing up and all the stereotypes and prejudices the society has towards them (especially about LGBT people and POC) along with the inner thoughts that are usually not friendly and mess up young people’s mind. Again, the idea was nice but because of the poor writing the quotes and thoughts do not make a reader fully feel them and the emotions are not described well either. Nevertheless, here it is possible to say that maybe these unfinished ideas and thoughts make a reader think for themselves and connect the events with their own life, giving an opportunity to reason and think because actually what is described in a book is very common among teenagers, and I’m pretty sure every person can relate to these struggles. But anyway, the writing is the main problem in this book.
Continuing the topic of poor writing, another thing that is important to mention is the dialogues in the story. The majority of the book consists of dialogues. The problem is that they are empty, without any actions (no additional information about what the characters are doing at the moment), so it looks extremely robotic. Sometimes there are just a few pages long dialogues that looks like an iMessage conversation… Also the majority of these dialogues look extremely unrealistic, people don’t talk like this in real life. Because the majority is just dialogues without anything, the book is so fast to read (also because some chapters are literally a few paragraphs), even though there are more than 300 pages.
The last thing that should be mentioned is the plot itself. The plot is developed and planned, there is a logic, but the plot twists are so fast. If it was good written, the book would stay approximately the same size but the events would be expanded, and therefore, everything wouldn’t be happening that quickly. For instance, it literally took them only like a few lines to meet and already become friends, and then, a few chapters later there is already a completely new event that drives the plot. Why not to show all the processes and events in more details?
In conclusion, I would say that this book is something like a one-evening read and nothing more. The story is really heartwarming, but the poor writing ruined everything. I think it could be a really nice book for young people which would make all of us to rethink our lives and reason more aspects of it. I would also recommend this book for English learners who has approximately B1 and maybe B2 (I think this is more suitable for the sequel), and who wants to improve their language skills by reading something. Personally, even though I like such topics, and I really wanted to enjoy the book, the poor writing made its thing, and I didn’t feel the book at all. However, I still decided to give a second chance to a sequel, and, spoiler alert, I didn’t like that one either.
Well, all I can say is that the potential was great. I liked the idea, the boys and other characters are nice and cute, but this book has a massive problem which is a poor writing. It is written as primitive as possible, the description of everything is so poor, which leads to another problem of ‘not deep enough’ quotes. The book focuses on many important topics, and the main character is showing us the problems of young boys growing up and all the stereotypes and prejudices the society has towards them (especially about LGBT people and POC) along with the inner thoughts that are usually not friendly and mess up young people’s mind. Again, the idea was nice but because of the poor writing the quotes and thoughts do not make a reader fully feel them and the emotions are not described well either. Nevertheless, here it is possible to say that maybe these unfinished ideas and thoughts make a reader think for themselves and connect the events with their own life, giving an opportunity to reason and think because actually what is described in a book is very common among teenagers, and I’m pretty sure every person can relate to these struggles. But anyway, the writing is the main problem in this book.
Continuing the topic of poor writing, another thing that is important to mention is the dialogues in the story. The majority of the book consists of dialogues. The problem is that they are empty, without any actions (no additional information about what the characters are doing at the moment), so it looks extremely robotic. Sometimes there are just a few pages long dialogues that looks like an iMessage conversation… Also the majority of these dialogues look extremely unrealistic, people don’t talk like this in real life. Because the majority is just dialogues without anything, the book is so fast to read (also because some chapters are literally a few paragraphs), even though there are more than 300 pages.
The last thing that should be mentioned is the plot itself. The plot is developed and planned, there is a logic, but the plot twists are so fast. If it was good written, the book would stay approximately the same size but the events would be expanded, and therefore, everything wouldn’t be happening that quickly. For instance, it literally took them only like a few lines to meet and already become friends, and then, a few chapters later there is already a completely new event that drives the plot. Why not to show all the processes and events in more details?
In conclusion, I would say that this book is something like a one-evening read and nothing more. The story is really heartwarming, but the poor writing ruined everything. I think it could be a really nice book for young people which would make all of us to rethink our lives and reason more aspects of it. I would also recommend this book for English learners who has approximately B1 and maybe B2 (I think this is more suitable for the sequel), and who wants to improve their language skills by reading something. Personally, even though I like such topics, and I really wanted to enjoy the book, the poor writing made its thing, and I didn’t feel the book at all. However, I still decided to give a second chance to a sequel, and, spoiler alert, I didn’t like that one either.