Review by imgunnagetyou - An Old Soul

imgunnagetyou 's review for:

An Old Soul by M. Kevin Hayden

3.0

i'll be honest and say my enjoyment of this book was ruined by the romance, which isn't even a tag on storygraph for it so that's mega annoying. i really want to like it, i was born in the early 2000s so it was cool to read a lot of technology shit in the 90s, but it feels kind of plotless for a fat portion of the book.
little bit of male writing syndrome maybe. Noa blushes all the time and when Isaac blushed it was called "man blush" LMFAO
my copy had some problems with formatting. (this doesnt affect review/rating) theres one random instance where it was aligned to the right instead of the left, theres like 3-4 different fonts that are randomly used, text TOO far to the left, text too low to the bottom.
the romance:

SO incredibly co-dependent i thought this was supposed to be a horror book at some point! Noa's husband Joseph dies of brain cancer so she recreates him in a virtual simulation and brings him into the real world, i mean that's just fucked up to me LMAOO. but the author keeps trying to claim its "love" my brother in Christ they've known each other for 2 weeks. i mean Noa, sure, but why does Isaac "love" her so fast, ong they are saying "i love you" like 1-2 months in. i was really hoping honestly that Noa would fail to bring Isaac back or he would say nah because it's just kind of disturbing to me. i forgot the genre and thought it might be a thriller or something because at some point, Noa begins to love bomb- i swear she does. at some point Noa leaves and says she can't come back, and Isaac is so dependent on her he loses the will to live. that is not romantic

writing: the writing is perfectly alright, lots of repetition on certain works like "smirk" is used a little too much, some bloat, some things are repeated multiple times in different ways. writing the words "electric pleasure ants" referring to chills while kissing is a choice you one can make certainly
Noa:

this book would've been infinitely better if Noa approached the acceptance stage of grief and finally let go of her husband. the fact that even after 2 years she wants to resurrect him, then switches to bring Isaac's consciousness(Isaac can't have a spirit or soul, he's not real!)into her dead husbands body, she at first wavers and thinks "oh wait... i want to put someone else into my dead husbands corpse, thats fucked up!" but then thankfully we are reassured that the dead body has in fact been buried or burned and its a new body and its all better now. eh. it would've been better if Noa had just accepted that Joseph can't come back, and she should not recreate him as some AI. it felt like those stories of people trying to marry their AIs, kind of disturbing

otherwise, she was a very interesting character! had a few strange things, she CONSTANTLY giggles, blushes, her eyes/eye colour is mentioned at least every other page that she's on, and that goes with the writing thing i mentioned above
side character:

i want to understand the reason for the way Sharika was written, just seemed kinda random? i mean, it went nowhere, from the first time to the last time she's on page shes an asshole to the main character until he finally blows up on her and quits his job by breaking the computers. i mean, maybe this is dumb, actually unsure, but just felt like if u have an asshole character they should have a reason. or something. bad home life. main character insulted her or something. nah Sharika for some reason think Isaac likes her and so she constantly demeans him saying she needs a better man than him, u k hun? all the other side characters that matter are perfectly fine though.

ending:

yeah the sci-fi elements in this book are pretty weak. in the ending especially, we are constantly told that Noa has no time, she's being tracked by a shitty government, theyre going to jail her or worse etc etc, but then Isaac comes back to life and everything is perfectly fine. i just kinda wish we got more world building of what was going on in 2078. i mean, it seems the buildings are windowless, theres been a fourth world war, Noa calls outside a wasteland, theres a virtual reality you can lose yourself in, theres a rebel group fighting it that Noa works with but it all goes nowhere.

Content Warnings