A review by annreadsabook
Rootless by Krystle Zara Appiah

  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I struggled with this one…there’s no real sense of *why* these characters get married despite their obvious and severe differences in terms of desires for a family. The chemistry was not quite there for me enough for it to be believable that they were SO in love that they felt they could make it work. More than this, though, the lack of interiority on Efe’s part (since in reality the book is mostly about her vantage point) really makes it hard to understand the many terrible choices she makes, only to regret almost all of them. I get very little sense of personality from Efe, which made it hard for me to understand anything she did (or didn’t do).

I also found the ending to be extremely (unnecessarily) jarring and haphazardly thrown in…I can’t understand why the book would end this way aside from shock value. 

I think the premise itself is interesting and the book held my attention; I just needed the characters’ chemistry to be more believable and would’ve liked to have gotten a bit more into Efe’s interior life because there really was no understanding of how she was reasoning through her decisions.
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