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cosmicblob's Reviews (801)
This review will contain spoilers. I'm not going to hide it because most people will have read it already anyway and it's just not worth it. Proceed at own risk.
So I started reading this book, expecting that it would be at least decent. Partly because it's such a heavily discussed book with a good rating, partly because I watched the movie when I was younger and quite enjoyed that one.
Yea, I didn't like the book. At all.
Plot & Technical Issues
First off, the author apparently believes that as soon as you hit puberty, all you think of is sex. Because as soon as the main characters are teenagers, sex is mentioned every few pages until the very end of the book. Some examples:
and finally my favorite:
Because, you know, it was so important to mention that they're having sex in this context. I also always include sex when I tell someone what I've been doing yesterday. "Hey, so I was reading, and drawing, had some ridiculously good sex, and went shopping. The usual." Completely normal.
Anyway, you get my point. There is also this thing with a boy called Harry that Kathy flirts with at some point to have sex with but dumps before it comes to it because she hears Ruth and Tommy Broke Up (Take One). It was completely unnecessary to include that and it was super awkward to read, I assure you.
Another thing that bothered me is that the whole donation system doesn't work because you know how many organs a human being can donate before dying? One, and it's a kidney. Donating three or four vital organs?
Recovering from getting one organ removed while being alive is already a big deal. Removing another one? You're pretty much dead.
On another note, you can't cure all types of cancer through organ donations. Leukemia requires bone marrow and you can't replace a brain. Tumors and metastasis can also be in, for example, your leg, and then you might have to amputate it. A leg is not an organ and it cannot be donated.
Also the fact that this world is super advanced in technology and can clone people and all that sass but they're still using cassettes, VHS, record players, and walkmans?
Writing Style
The writing style has been an issue that many addressed and now that I've read it, I can finally understand. The author tries to add those little details throughout the book to make Hailsman and its students feel more real, which in itself isn't really a problem. But the way he does it feels so forced and unnatural, and sometimes it's even kind of confusing because it's just randomly thrown in without serving any visible purpose. For example this quote:
Now you might be thinking: What the heck is a Crow Face? The answer is, it's their school's nurse.
But why did he refer to her like this? I don't know. There's really no point in doing that. You could replace "Crow Face" with a simple "nurse" anytime, it's not like she's mentioned ever again anyway. Wouldn't change a thing.
Another thing he does, which is closely related to the previous one, is when he tries to explain the meaning of certain things to the characters. He goes like: "So we went to that bakery" and follows that up with a long paragraph of information about the bakery from when it was built and the first time a cake was sold, until he finally comes back to the actual plot and tells you what happened at the bakery and why the bakery itself might or might not be relevant to the plot. And after reading something like that for the 700th time, you're just annoyed and bored and I literally fell asleep while reading because it was just that boring.
Also when Kathy speaks directly to the reader, which happens just two or three times throughout the book, and talks about things that happen at schools like Hailsham and then goes like: "But you should know because you were at one of those too, right?"
No. No, I don't. I have no idea what you're talking about because nobody explained it to me and the author apparently expects me to either already know or guess from whatever bullshit I've been reading so far.
which is eventually followed up by something like this:
This happens a lot. Why not just tell us right now instead of losing yourself in unnecessary anecdotes and details? I'd be really grateful if the author would just chronologically tell us what the heck happened instead of building up to something and then interrupting with a stupid story about how they peed into their diapers when they were infants. That's just not good writing, folks.
If I have to hear the words "daft" and "cross" ever again, I swear to god I will shoot myself in the head.
Characters
Kathy
Kathy is like this pseudo-philosophical emo teenager you can find on tumblr. She talks like she knows everything and just discovered the meaning of life while not knowing shit. She has no backbone, she is boring, and all she does is talking about how nobody understands her and how she's being excluded from everything. Get a grip girl. If you want things to change, DO SOMETHING.
"Oh, the love of my life is going to die? Well, whatever." Even if you know you can't do anything against the system and therefore don't want to try, can you at least show some emotion so that I can distinguish you from a robot, please?
Kathy's character is overall just like one of those jelly beans that taste like vomit - from the outside, it looks fine, like all the other jelly beans in the pack, but then you take a bite and have to realize that it's just not fucking okay inside.
Ruth
There's no point in denying it: Ruth is, and will always be, an attention whore, a notorious liar, and a bad friend. All she did the whole book was treating Kathy, her best friend, like she was shit. Like she had to earn the privilege of being friends with someone as amazing as her. For example when Kathy suspects that Ruth has been lying about her pencil case being from Miss Geraldine and confronts her. Ruth's first reaction is to just ignore her and also make everybody else ignore Kathy because that's what friends do when they're mad at each other, right? The same thing happens when Kathy tells her that she's making Tommy feel uncomfortable with her behavior at the Cottages later on - instead of taking Kathy's advice, she treats her like air. And when she eventually needs Kathy to console herself she's like:
and Kathy forgives her while knowing that Ruth is problematic and shit. Yay!
Also, the way she treats Tommy, her boyfriend™, like he's a little child that needs to be taken care of. Tommy is like a dog she keeps simply because everyone else has one too, and since he's on a leash he can't run away. She also cheated on him, which was briefly mentioned and then never picked up again like it's something that happens every day and is completely normal.
Well, I never was under the impression that they were in love anyway, so yea, what did I expect from her?
And was I supposed to forgive her at the end because she helped Tommy and Kathy to get together? I hope not, because I still dread her. The whole book I wished she would just choke and her death was the best part of the book, honestly.
Tommy
I can't really say anything about Tommy because he literally has no personality. He seems like a really sweet guy who can get really mad sometimes but doesn't want to hurt anyone. If the other would have given him some other part in the plot than "I'm following the girls around and pleasure them", he would've been a nice character. Not completely fine, but at least decent. But as it is now, he's just a constantly weeping teenager who has bad luck with women and no backbone.
Character development? I think the fuck not.
Anyway, I'm done with this book. I'm not going to edit this review because the more I get into it, the saltier I get. And that's exactly the problem with this book - you finish it and you think it's fine, a three or four-star book, maybe even five. And then you set it aside and think about it for a little and realize that what you've been reading is actual bullshit.
So I started reading this book, expecting that it would be at least decent. Partly because it's such a heavily discussed book with a good rating, partly because I watched the movie when I was younger and quite enjoyed that one.
Yea, I didn't like the book. At all.
Plot & Technical Issues
First off, the author apparently believes that as soon as you hit puberty, all you think of is sex. Because as soon as the main characters are teenagers, sex is mentioned every few pages until the very end of the book. Some examples:
"And you didn't want to do it in the fields even when it was warm enough, because you'd most certainly discover afterwards you'd an audience watching from the house passing around binoculars."
"Gay sex, incidentally, was something we were even more confused about. For some reason, we called it "umbrella sex"; if you fancied something from your own sex, you were an "umbrella"."
"According to her [Hannah], things like your kidneys and pancreas didn't work properly unless you kept having sex."
"If I remember sex at the Cottages, I think about doing it in freezing rooms in the pitch dark, usually under a ton of blankets. [...], and if you were having sex at the bottom of it [the blankets], it felt like a mountain of bedding was pounding at you, so half of the time you weren't sure if you were doing it with the boy or all that stuff."
and finally my favorite:
"[...], and we whiled away the hours in his room, sometimes having sex, more often just talking, or with Tommy listening to me read."
Because, you know, it was so important to mention that they're having sex in this context. I also always include sex when I tell someone what I've been doing yesterday. "Hey, so I was reading, and drawing, had some ridiculously good sex, and went shopping. The usual." Completely normal.
Anyway, you get my point. There is also this thing with a boy called Harry that Kathy flirts with at some point to have sex with but dumps before it comes to it because she hears Ruth and Tommy Broke Up (Take One). It was completely unnecessary to include that and it was super awkward to read, I assure you.
Another thing that bothered me is that the whole donation system doesn't work because you know how many organs a human being can donate before dying? One, and it's a kidney. Donating three or four vital organs?
Recovering from getting one organ removed while being alive is already a big deal. Removing another one? You're pretty much dead.
On another note, you can't cure all types of cancer through organ donations. Leukemia requires bone marrow and you can't replace a brain. Tumors and metastasis can also be in, for example, your leg, and then you might have to amputate it. A leg is not an organ and it cannot be donated.
Also the fact that this world is super advanced in technology and can clone people and all that sass but they're still using cassettes, VHS, record players, and walkmans?
Writing Style
The writing style has been an issue that many addressed and now that I've read it, I can finally understand. The author tries to add those little details throughout the book to make Hailsman and its students feel more real, which in itself isn't really a problem. But the way he does it feels so forced and unnatural, and sometimes it's even kind of confusing because it's just randomly thrown in without serving any visible purpose. For example this quote:
"Did Crow Face tell you you had to do this?"
Now you might be thinking: What the heck is a Crow Face? The answer is, it's their school's nurse.
But why did he refer to her like this? I don't know. There's really no point in doing that. You could replace "Crow Face" with a simple "nurse" anytime, it's not like she's mentioned ever again anyway. Wouldn't change a thing.
Another thing he does, which is closely related to the previous one, is when he tries to explain the meaning of certain things to the characters. He goes like: "So we went to that bakery" and follows that up with a long paragraph of information about the bakery from when it was built and the first time a cake was sold, until he finally comes back to the actual plot and tells you what happened at the bakery and why the bakery itself might or might not be relevant to the plot. And after reading something like that for the 700th time, you're just annoyed and bored and I literally fell asleep while reading because it was just that boring.
Also when Kathy speaks directly to the reader, which happens just two or three times throughout the book, and talks about things that happen at schools like Hailsham and then goes like: "But you should know because you were at one of those too, right?"
No. No, I don't. I have no idea what you're talking about because nobody explained it to me and the author apparently expects me to either already know or guess from whatever bullshit I've been reading so far.
"But apart from one particular time, which I'll come to in a moment, a little prickle was all it was."
which is eventually followed up by something like this:
"Anyway, the point is, I'd had a few one-nighters shortly after getting to the Cottages."
This happens a lot. Why not just tell us right now instead of losing yourself in unnecessary anecdotes and details? I'd be really grateful if the author would just chronologically tell us what the heck happened instead of building up to something and then interrupting with a stupid story about how they peed into their diapers when they were infants. That's just not good writing, folks.
If I have to hear the words "daft" and "cross" ever again, I swear to god I will shoot myself in the head.
Characters
Kathy
Kathy is like this pseudo-philosophical emo teenager you can find on tumblr. She talks like she knows everything and just discovered the meaning of life while not knowing shit. She has no backbone, she is boring, and all she does is talking about how nobody understands her and how she's being excluded from everything. Get a grip girl. If you want things to change, DO SOMETHING.
"Oh, the love of my life is going to die? Well, whatever." Even if you know you can't do anything against the system and therefore don't want to try, can you at least show some emotion so that I can distinguish you from a robot, please?
Kathy's character is overall just like one of those jelly beans that taste like vomit - from the outside, it looks fine, like all the other jelly beans in the pack, but then you take a bite and have to realize that it's just not fucking okay inside.
Ruth
There's no point in denying it: Ruth is, and will always be, an attention whore, a notorious liar, and a bad friend. All she did the whole book was treating Kathy, her best friend, like she was shit. Like she had to earn the privilege of being friends with someone as amazing as her. For example when Kathy suspects that Ruth has been lying about her pencil case being from Miss Geraldine and confronts her. Ruth's first reaction is to just ignore her and also make everybody else ignore Kathy because that's what friends do when they're mad at each other, right? The same thing happens when Kathy tells her that she's making Tommy feel uncomfortable with her behavior at the Cottages later on - instead of taking Kathy's advice, she treats her like air. And when she eventually needs Kathy to console herself she's like:
and Kathy forgives her while knowing that Ruth is problematic and shit. Yay!
Also, the way she treats Tommy, her boyfriend™, like he's a little child that needs to be taken care of. Tommy is like a dog she keeps simply because everyone else has one too, and since he's on a leash he can't run away. She also cheated on him, which was briefly mentioned and then never picked up again like it's something that happens every day and is completely normal.
"[...] even though I was with Tommy, I couldn't resist doing it with other people sometimes. At least three others when we were at the Cottages."
Well, I never was under the impression that they were in love anyway, so yea, what did I expect from her?
And was I supposed to forgive her at the end because she helped Tommy and Kathy to get together? I hope not, because I still dread her. The whole book I wished she would just choke and her death was the best part of the book, honestly.
Tommy
I can't really say anything about Tommy because he literally has no personality. He seems like a really sweet guy who can get really mad sometimes but doesn't want to hurt anyone. If the other would have given him some other part in the plot than "I'm following the girls around and pleasure them", he would've been a nice character. Not completely fine, but at least decent. But as it is now, he's just a constantly weeping teenager who has bad luck with women and no backbone.
Character development? I think the fuck not.
Anyway, I'm done with this book. I'm not going to edit this review because the more I get into it, the saltier I get. And that's exactly the problem with this book - you finish it and you think it's fine, a three or four-star book, maybe even five. And then you set it aside and think about it for a little and realize that what you've been reading is actual bullshit.