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penstarling 's review for:
Before Mars
by Emma Newman
All the Planetfall books do essentially stand alone, but I wouldn't recommend reading this one first as I think it would spoil the mystery in the other books.
Once again an excellent depiction of mental illness, in this case dealing with a mentally ill parent and additionally the social construct defining 'abnormal' and making perfectly fine people feel fucked up for not adhering to a prescribed standard. I have several friends in similar situations as the MC in this book, who came to love motherhood later, or who liked having kids, but did not like having infants and felt "broken" for not bonding with their child in the way they were told they would.
And again I'm challenged because I'm also not sure I agree with the way some mental illness was handled in the story. The MC's experience of growing up with a schizophrenic parent is very real, and very much how she experienced it even if it turned out but I'm not sure how I feel about that basically being an easy fix for the father. That was also the worst loose end in the story for me. Who was causing it and why?
There were actually very few surprises for me in this story. Given what I know of this universe from the other book, it was pretty clear early on exactly what was going to happen. Maybe not the how or why, but definitely what. There was very little mystery to it, being very obvious to me (though not to the MC) but this story was immensely enjoyable anyway. If I was going to nit pick anything, it's the loose end mentioned above, and the nature of way the story unfolds doesn't allow us to see real bonding between characters. I'd have loved to see This book like the others was imperfect, too long in some parts, too quick to deal with other things, but the characters, the storytelling, and the language were wonderful making for a very enjoyable read.
This series is so fantastic. I'm sad I have to wait for the next book to be released. Especially since I need to know if
Once again an excellent depiction of mental illness, in this case dealing with a mentally ill parent and additionally the social construct defining 'abnormal' and making perfectly fine people feel fucked up for not adhering to a prescribed standard. I have several friends in similar situations as the MC in this book, who came to love motherhood later, or who liked having kids, but did not like having infants and felt "broken" for not bonding with their child in the way they were told they would.
And again I'm challenged because I'm also not sure I agree with the way some mental illness was handled in the story. The MC's experience of growing up with a schizophrenic parent is very real, and very much how she experienced it even if it turned out
Spoiler
to be intentionally caused by bad guysThere were actually very few surprises for me in this story. Given what I know of this universe from the other book, it was pretty clear early on exactly what was going to happen. Maybe not the how or why, but definitely what. There was very little mystery to it, being very obvious to me (though not to the MC) but this story was immensely enjoyable anyway. If I was going to nit pick anything, it's the loose end mentioned above, and the nature of way the story unfolds doesn't allow us to see real bonding between characters. I'd have loved to see
Spoiler
Anna and Dr. Elvan's relationship re-develop in their new timeline and maybe see it be parallel to the original one. Or at least have him more developed as a character, as he didn't much going for him besides 'nice' and 'handsome.'This series is so fantastic. I'm sad I have to wait for the next book to be released. Especially since I need to know if