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A review by obsidian_blue
The Street Where You Live by Roisin Meaney
3.0
Updated June 25, 2024: Honestly this is still just three stars. The book just drags badly I thought and there's so many loose ends. You are just left guessing too much for me about what happens next with all of the characters.
January 26, 2021 update: This was actually better as re-read I think. I ended up giving it 3 stars. I think the first time through I was just annoyed with how slow going it was and skimmed some stuff. I think that some of the plot points were a bit absurd, but for the most part I liked the inner workings of a local community choir members.
I actually felt for Christopher a lot in re-read. I don't think I caught why he was so sour on people the first time through.
Emily still needed to work through how she treated her son and daughter. I did feel for Emily since she just feels a little lost while you are reading the book.
I did think the ending worked a bit better now too. It was good to see how the different characters have changed their plans and themselves when we check back in three months later.
Original review:
This is going to be short and sweet. Just pass on this book. I read two other books by this author and enjoyed them. I hoped this would be good too. But this reads like a very rough rough first draft. Things are not fleshed out enough by far for half the characters. Things are not really resolved, I guess the author wants us to imagine how things will go. And way too many characters in this with no one taking a form hold in my brain.
I was actually surprised to get to the end considering how endless the book seemed to be on the plane.
The book takes place over the summer and involves members of an amateur choir and those who are connected to them. So at one point I think we have Molly and Emily (mother and daughter) the choir director Christopher and his neighbor (Freddie) and her daughter, Emily's handyman friend Clem. I feel like there is someone else I am blanking on, but I won't go and look it back up.
I don't know what else to get into except nothing flows together right at all. Each character has major issues that they needed to see a therapist about. I didn't care about Christopher and thought he was awful. Emily was way too naive and kind of a jerk about a guy who seemed to like her. Molly was too focused on her son that she had not seen in years. I thought Clem was okayish, but we don't get to spend much time with him.
I just felt like this written more as short stories about people living in the same town. I think that if Meaney had pulled a Binchy (write about people who live near each other in a small town) with some small connections here and there, but we get to follow their stories through it would have worked better. The way this was written we just get some barely there development of characters and rush to an ending.
January 26, 2021 update: This was actually better as re-read I think. I ended up giving it 3 stars. I think the first time through I was just annoyed with how slow going it was and skimmed some stuff. I think that some of the plot points were a bit absurd, but for the most part I liked the inner workings of a local community choir members.
I actually felt for Christopher a lot in re-read. I don't think I caught why he was so sour on people the first time through.
Emily still needed to work through how she treated her son and daughter. I did feel for Emily since she just feels a little lost while you are reading the book.
I did think the ending worked a bit better now too. It was good to see how the different characters have changed their plans and themselves when we check back in three months later.
Original review:
This is going to be short and sweet. Just pass on this book. I read two other books by this author and enjoyed them. I hoped this would be good too. But this reads like a very rough rough first draft. Things are not fleshed out enough by far for half the characters. Things are not really resolved, I guess the author wants us to imagine how things will go. And way too many characters in this with no one taking a form hold in my brain.
I was actually surprised to get to the end considering how endless the book seemed to be on the plane.
The book takes place over the summer and involves members of an amateur choir and those who are connected to them. So at one point I think we have Molly and Emily (mother and daughter) the choir director Christopher and his neighbor (Freddie) and her daughter, Emily's handyman friend Clem. I feel like there is someone else I am blanking on, but I won't go and look it back up.
I don't know what else to get into except nothing flows together right at all. Each character has major issues that they needed to see a therapist about. I didn't care about Christopher and thought he was awful. Emily was way too naive and kind of a jerk about a guy who seemed to like her. Molly was too focused on her son that she had not seen in years. I thought Clem was okayish, but we don't get to spend much time with him.
I just felt like this written more as short stories about people living in the same town. I think that if Meaney had pulled a Binchy (write about people who live near each other in a small town) with some small connections here and there, but we get to follow their stories through it would have worked better. The way this was written we just get some barely there development of characters and rush to an ending.