theshiftyshadow's reviews
329 reviews

This feels like quite an important book, in that it shines a light on the fact that everything in this world, right down to the words we speak, have been decided and defined by "educated" men. Not a new concept to me, but could probably serve as a starting point for some people in unpacking the ideas of sexism, patriarchy, classism etc. 

I wanted to like it more than I did. There were some really great sections and then there were some that just dragged. I did like how the timeline of the dictionary crossed over with so many major world events, and how that played into Esme's journey, but at the same time it felt like maybe there was a little bit too much of that, and sometimes it was at the expense of the characters. 

It's one of those books that when I was reading it, I was enjoying it, but whenever I put it down, I was in no hurry to get back to it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I just felt like it was lacking a little bit of emotional investment. I think it would be the perfect book to make a mini series out of, and expand on some of the supporting characters, really emphasize the emotional connections they had, especially Lizzie and Esme.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am not a reader of this genre, or a fan of this genre in any medium. So this was probably just never going to be a book for me. 

I get it, but I don't like it. There's a point half way through where the main character does a thing, and I had to stop and ask myself did I read that right, is that what's just happened? And it was. I guess it was supposed to be a twist of sorts, or like a reveal that what you thought was going to happen wasn't happening, or who you thought you were following wasn't who you thought he was, that kind of thing. The problem for me was that I just didn't care. 

Up until this point you're following Marcos, and he's doing this horrible job but he's having doubts, he seems conflicted about what he's doing, about humanity in general. But I never felt like I got a real feel for this character because the book just spends so much time talking about the processing of humans as meat. And it's not even a case of me being grossed out by it, I wasn't, there was just so much of it that it became boring and repetitive and felt about as subtle as a sledgehammer, which I think has the opposite effect of what the author was maybe going for? By the time we get to where the thing I mentioned above happens I was already pretty fed up and I finished the second half of the book purely because it was short. 

Like I said, this isn't a genre I go for, SciFi, dystopia, horror, whatever it is, and I much prefer books that are heavily character driven, and this book just had too much of the world building and not enough of the characters. 

I think probably the biggest "problem" I had with this book is that reading it two years into the Covid pandemic removes pretty much all of the shock value. If I'd read this 4 years ago it would probably have been a completely different experience, but as it is, I was just thinking, "yeah, that would probably happen, people would do that" everytime something disturbing or shocking was mentioned. 

This started fantastically well, the sort of book I couldn't put down and thought I'd get through it's hefty 500ish pages in a very short time. Then something happened that meant I had to put it down and couldn't get back to it for a week, and when I did it just didn't have the same effect on me. 

It's told in three parts, three different years, but it goes backwards in time. The first part was the most interesting, probably because you're presented with all these characters with mysterious secrets and it piques your interest as to how they all got to where they are at this point in time. The problem for me was with each jump back in time, and as the backstory's were revealed, I found none of them were actually all that interesting. I'm not entirely sure the structure of it actually adds anything, and by the time I got to the last section I found I'd almost forgotten what it was I was waiting to find out. Maybe that's a result of having to put it down for so long. If I'd been able to carry on at the pace I read the first section, I might have enjoyed it more.

Not surprised to read in the notes that this was originally published in a shorter version in a magazine, and had 6 chapters added when published as a book. One of the chapters is literally just a very boring list of all the hobbies Dorian fills his years with. I can only assume that wasn't in the original draft. 

A really fascinating idea, but it has no business being this long. 

This was tipping along nicely, a solid 4 stars for the most part, maybe even flirting with 5 stars, and then that ending.....

It was almost like the author got bored and just wanted to end it. It felt way too neat and I don't think it did justice to the wonderful story that had played out up to that point. 

At one point I briefly thought the two women were going to develop feelings for each other, and maybe they should have? It certainly would have made it a more interesting conflict, and set up a less convenient ending, I think. 

Still an enjoyable read up to the very end though. 

This is very different from what I expected and is really more like a psychological thriller, than out and out horror. Dracula himsel  hangs over everything but the man himself appears surprisingly little. 

The epistolary style of the book works fantastically well in the opening half of the book but I found it became a bit of a slog after that. At times there were 10 page journal entries that had about 2 lines of relative information in them. I also found the ending to be slightly anticlimactic, but on the whole it's a pretty decent read. 

This book is just very sad and kind of devastating but it's also weirdly racist, maybe? Like there's all these lines about native Americans and I just couldn't figure out why they were there? Was it to tell us the parents were even worse people than we thought? Maybe it was representative of the views of people living in this place at that time, but even then it seemed very out of place, to the point I couldn't tell if it was the characters or the author.  

It took me a little while to really get into this but once I did it had me gripped. I kept waiting for the shit to hit the fan but once it got to a point where it felt like it might happen I realised that I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to happen once it did. 

Tayari Jones does such a great job of making all the choices the characters make understandable, even if they're bad or harmful choices, so, for me anyway, it wasn't ever a case of taking sides, or rooting for one family over the other. Even with James, who was the least likable, I could see how he ended up in the situation.

I was also happy to see the women were the central focus of this story. Yes James is the one who made it all happen, but aside from a little bit of backstory to explain how they all got to this point, it's all about the girls/women. And this really came into play towards the end when I expected

the reveal to come at the gas station, and for James and Raleigh to be in the middle of it, but instead it played out later, between the mothers and daughters, and James and Raleigh mostly disappeared after that. And again, some characters made some choices after the reveal that I didn't necessarily like, but I could see why they made them. 

I know practically every book ever written is being made into a film, or adapted for TV these days, but this is one I would dearly love to see get a mini series. There were several scenes I could see vividly in my head as I was reading them.