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purplegreen's reviews
226 reviews
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
2.0
I wanted to like this story. I really did. It had a lot of potential, but then there ended up just being too many predictable plot points and telling rather than showing.
The Luster of Lost Things by Sophie Chen Keller
2.0
It was trying too hard to be a combination of:
* Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
* Chocolat
*probably some other Hero's Journey-type story with elements of magical realism
...although it was not as subtle or moving. Explicit in its themes and predictable in its trajectory, it was a quick, feel-good type read (or in my case, listen). Perfect to binge while doing housework on a rainy weekend.
I'm about to graduate with an MS in Communication Disorders, and it's been a while since I had a good book binge. The character's diagnosis caught my interest (along with the "weirdness" of the magical realism aspects of the story). While I appreciate the author's attempt to use a main character with a motor speech disorder, it was not very well-described and - I listened to the audiobook version - the narrator did a terrible job trying convey the character's speech pattern and difficulties. Most of the time it sounded more like disfluency than a motor speech disorder. It's never specified exactly what his diagnosis is, but based on the (limited) description of his speech difficulties it sounds to me like childhood apraxia of speech. Sometimes this aspect of the character's identity was, I think, a little too heavy-handed. Like, alright already. We get it.
* Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
* Chocolat
*probably some other Hero's Journey-type story with elements of magical realism
...although it was not as subtle or moving. Explicit in its themes and predictable in its trajectory, it was a quick, feel-good type read (or in my case, listen). Perfect to binge while doing housework on a rainy weekend.
I'm about to graduate with an MS in Communication Disorders, and it's been a while since I had a good book binge. The character's diagnosis caught my interest (along with the "weirdness" of the magical realism aspects of the story). While I appreciate the author's attempt to use a main character with a motor speech disorder, it was not very well-described and - I listened to the audiobook version - the narrator did a terrible job trying convey the character's speech pattern and difficulties. Most of the time it sounded more like disfluency than a motor speech disorder. It's never specified exactly what his diagnosis is, but based on the (limited) description of his speech difficulties it sounds to me like childhood apraxia of speech. Sometimes this aspect of the character's identity was, I think, a little too heavy-handed. Like, alright already. We get it.