kaylaramoutar's reviews
708 reviews

Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim

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1.5

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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3.0

The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack

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fast-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.0

This review will be full of spoilers. I will not be hiding them because then I'd have to hide the entire review and I'm just not down for that in this case!

cw fatphobia; dead parents; description of a murdered child

The premise of this novel is a cool, intriguing idea. A man, Bryan, experiences vivid dreams that he eventually realizes are memories from a past life, and to get through the pain of them—for they are all grief-heavy, at least the ones shown on page—he paints the scenes. A woman, Linz, has lived with a recurring nightmare her entire life. When she sees her nightmare on Bryan's canvas at a gallery, both their lives change. What happens next is ruminating on reincarnation, fate/destiny, and what happens when two people keep finding each other, life after life.

Or that's what it might have been, had it been done in any sort of interesting way.

I had a lot of problems with this novel. First off, and possibly a bit personally, I found the editing quite lacking; I thought it could have used another round of copyediting. Yet in an upsetting turn of events, this was the least egregious problem! I found the writing itself very simple which kept taking me out of the story. For example: the author's choices on what to describe confused me from page one. We don't get a proper description of Bryan yet get a very detailed, almost creepy description of Linz from Bryan's POV. When Linz describes her friends, she refers to her male friend with multiple descriptors ("flamboyantly gay and ramrod thin, loved to talk art and fashion at all times and could charm a rock") and her female friend with a lot less ("business mind behind the dynamic duo and a quiet introvert with an obvious weight problem"). Like, what? What is the point of the mild, yet still there, fatphobia? Or at the very least, fat-shaming? Linz on the other hand, of course, is "frail and delicate", and not like other girls. Along with the strange description decisions, the characters themselves are so flat it's almost shocking. I had zero connection to Linz or Bryan! We should be rooting for them. Instead, I was waiting, craving, the moment we got to another chapter of a past life. Characters that had 5-6 pages had more depth than our main characters. I think the never-ending chapters of past lives, while the best parts of the story (IMO), took away from the development of Linz and Bryan—I was relying on the information from the past-lives-chapters to give me substance of our mains. That's just not right. Also, quickly, their insta-love was annoying and they acted like idiotic teenagers. Thirty pages into the novel I thought that would be what annoyed me most in the novel. Boy, was I wrong.

The next problem I had was the plot. Firstly, the the inside flap talks about how Bryan and Linz learn about a lab trial that was getting close to a possible Alzheimers cure. Of course, this trial went wrong (lab blew up) and they are the reincarnated scientists who were working on it (of course!). The problem is, there's not really anything about the trial. The head scientist, Michael, takes the drug and triggers his memories of his past lives, effectively ruining his own life and the scientists around him. Then we get chapters on chapters of Michael suffering through his memories. The Alzheimers plot point just felt like a means to an end and is barely ever brought up again. I also found it kind of ridiculous that every. single. past life was an incredibly important person in history. If reincarnation is real, I'm sure there are a couple boring ass lives, y'know? It just felt, "oh okay, they're a famous Japanese warrior and a famous violin maker. OMG, and an important Viking! Of course!" It just got really campy about halfway through, in a bad way. AND THEN on page 256 (of 317) readers get a nice little in depth story about ancient Egypt (interesting! fun! complex characters!)— but a whole new friggin' plot emerges. This plot is interesting, involved in Egyptian mythology, yet is smushed into like 50 pages and abruptly ends when the novel does (on a ridiculous ending, if I may add). What? It's an entire new plot that came out of nowhere in the last third of a novel! Why! What was the point!!

Lastly, I very much disliked that there were so many POC ~heroes of history that were boiled down to 2-4 white people in modern day Boston. Can important people of colour in history not just stand on their own legs? Their own history? Why must they be reincarnated into two very boring, very flat white main characters? Felt very white saviour narrative-coded. Also, I could be wrong on this part, but I don't think there were any POC in the modern day cast. Either way you can miss me with that shit, honestly, because history is already chock-full of POC being pushed aside for white people who take credit on their accomplishments. I don't need it in fiction—especially when none of the characters wonder to themselves about it, or bring up the fact they're all white yet have all been very important POC throughout history.

The only part I enjoyed was the chapters of the past lives. Reading about people in history was fun, and interesting—and those were the best-written parts too!

I went into this book with high expectations for a couple reasons—someone I trust loved it and it sounded very interesting!—but I think even without those expectations I wouldn't have liked it. This book will work for some people, it just didn't work for me.

Content Warnings