isabezza's reviews
325 reviews

The ending gave me goosebumps, and parts of this book were incredibly moving - the arguments, the forgiveness, and the friendships. However, grief is a hard one to write about because people respond in such different ways and I couldn't really relate to the main characters - so some of it felt distant and repetitive. I also just didn't like the main character! 

Read the content warnings - this book contained many traumatic events!

During the first few chapters, I was hooked, invested in the relationships (particularly Nancy and Val I loved them) and enjoying the style of writing. However, after a while the story became reliant on traumatic event after traumatic event in order to stay engaging, which kind of ruined the romance/found family trope and became too emotionally challenging to enjoy. It also removed the realism (whilst terrible things happen to lots of people, the way the characters reacted was too "perfect," so I felt very removed from the characters).

I am really surprised by the negative reviews. I am glad the book lasted longer than some people may have liked because it covered multiple elements of recovering from heartbreak and revealed the seemingly endless ups and downs of such an experience. The book was separated into prose chapters and short list-like chapters which were each full of witty remarks and popular culture references. The main character was incredibly relatable. The narrative voice was highly self-deprecating and amusing in her exposure of some of the more bizarre aspects of modern society and the things we take for granted. 

Hugh Fraser is such a fun and characteristic narrator. I would thoroughly recommend listening to one of the Agatha Christie novels as audiobooks that he has read. Five Little Pigs was a really intriguing cold-case mystery which had me hooked and perplexed to the final chapter. Just when I thought I had solved it, Christie threw in another psychological twist. She was such a clever writer.

Really interesting and shocking history of how "madness" is defined across various industries (psychology, media, law, etc.) The structure was occasionally difficult to follow as the text was not chronological to when the author learnt/experienced what he discusses, but it was still fascinating with funny anecdotes throughout.