hmdeans's reviews
5 reviews

The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.0

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

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

4.0

This book was lovely.  So many wonderful mesages threaded throughout.  I cried several times - very touching moments.  

The Guest by Emma Cline

mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This was alright.  It is mostly character driven, but there's absolutely no character development.  It was almost as if Cline was using Alex's character as a function of driving a thin plot forward, and that's it.  And maybe that was the point: a hollow, empty character that can fill in any space.  But I think that I personally just don't find that interesting. 

I personally didn't care much for her writing style, either.  It reads a bit like a teen or young adult, with a lot of fragmented and incomplete sentences.  I think this book had a lot of potential, but fell short.  

Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde

challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.5

Conceptually, this book was a bit too abstract for me.  There were a lot of images and scenes that I simply could not see, no matter how many times I read the sentence or paragraph describing it.  

Nonetheless, there were many other moments and scenes from this book that really took me - tears falling down my cheeks easily, feeling understood, etc. - and the threads of social justice and the power of love over the power of money helped to make up for any abstraction I couldn't grasp.  

I also felt like the chapters, or stories, were so disconnected from each other that I'm not sure why it's a novel; seems more like a collection of short stories, to me.  

All in all, a decent read.  

The Book of Dog by Lark Benobi

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

The message is great, but the style isn't  really to my taste.  Kind of felt like I was reading a children's story.  The plot felt thin and rushed.  I appreciate the humor benobi tries to an otherwise dark and foreboding subject, but I suspect the message risks getting lost in all of it.