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triftwizened 's review for:
Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble
by Alexis Hall
LONG REVIEW SO TL;DR - I enjoyed everything here except for how Paris’s anxiety is written (you’re not supposed to enjoy the anxiety part though), but take the representation with a grain of salt.
I’m conflicted about this, but I definitely don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to.
A large part of that is because I have a lot of empathy for Paris. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I quit caffeine because of that. And it sucks. The problem that this book faces, however, is managing to write Paris’s anxiety in a way where this book is still good entertainment. No one reads a book to experience anxiety. And this book swings so hard into Paris’s anxiety, that there’s large, frequent chunks that are not only very difficult to read, but also very tiresome.
But, like I said, I have a lot of empathy for Paris, so I’m probably being more forgiving towards this book than it actually deserves.
That all being said, I enjoyed every single character in this book except for Paris. I laughed (out loud!) several times. I loved Tariq, his family, the Daves, the other show contestants, Morag. All of them. I even liked Catherine Parr - in as much as I enjoyed her making butt-shaped cake pops and the other show contestants talking about how much they hated her.
Paris really came around for me in the last 20%, when he starts getting help, though I’m conflicted about this. As a character, I liked his arc and his friendship with Jennifer and how things turn out for him and Tariq. As representation, I felt like Paris made too much progress in too short a span of time. Like, Paris kept saying, “I’m not cured. I’ll never be cured. I’ll always struggle with anxiety,” (I’m paraphrasing here) but it felt very much like Alexis Hall had to make Paris say that because otherwise there almost wouldn’t be any evidence that Paris wasn’t totally miracle-cured. But I almost have to forgive Hall of this too, because after so much of this book being anxiety so tangible it comes off the book in waves, I didn’t really want to read Paris having another anxiety attack and I probably wouldn’t be giving it as high a rating as I did.
Quite frankly, I enjoyed the ending. I thought it was cute and sweet and I really loved seeing Paris and Tariq figure their shit out.
And in short, yeah this is a difficult book to read and I understand how and why people would not enjoy this book. That being said, I kind of did.
Side note: I did cringe a little when Tariq is telling Paris that saying Paris just got lucky when he won those three weeks because it puts down the winners of other weeks, and then again when Morag is telling Paris that he can’t say Morag has no reason to be around him except for cheap rent and free food without insulting Morag. This is pretty much exactly how I feel when Alexis Hall diminishes his success as an author, and it feels very much like Hall is talking out both sides of his mouth. But hey, what do I know.
I’m conflicted about this, but I definitely don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to.
A large part of that is because I have a lot of empathy for Paris. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I quit caffeine because of that. And it sucks. The problem that this book faces, however, is managing to write Paris’s anxiety in a way where this book is still good entertainment. No one reads a book to experience anxiety. And this book swings so hard into Paris’s anxiety, that there’s large, frequent chunks that are not only very difficult to read, but also very tiresome.
But, like I said, I have a lot of empathy for Paris, so I’m probably being more forgiving towards this book than it actually deserves.
That all being said, I enjoyed every single character in this book except for Paris. I laughed (out loud!) several times. I loved Tariq, his family, the Daves, the other show contestants, Morag. All of them. I even liked Catherine Parr - in as much as I enjoyed her making butt-shaped cake pops and the other show contestants talking about how much they hated her.
Paris really came around for me in the last 20%, when he starts getting help, though I’m conflicted about this. As a character, I liked his arc and his friendship with Jennifer and how things turn out for him and Tariq. As representation, I felt like Paris made too much progress in too short a span of time. Like, Paris kept saying, “I’m not cured. I’ll never be cured. I’ll always struggle with anxiety,” (I’m paraphrasing here) but it felt very much like Alexis Hall had to make Paris say that because otherwise there almost wouldn’t be any evidence that Paris wasn’t totally miracle-cured. But I almost have to forgive Hall of this too, because after so much of this book being anxiety so tangible it comes off the book in waves, I didn’t really want to read Paris having another anxiety attack and I probably wouldn’t be giving it as high a rating as I did.
Quite frankly, I enjoyed the ending. I thought it was cute and sweet and I really loved seeing Paris and Tariq figure their shit out.
And in short, yeah this is a difficult book to read and I understand how and why people would not enjoy this book. That being said, I kind of did.
Side note: I did cringe a little when Tariq is telling Paris that saying Paris just got lucky when he won those three weeks because it puts down the winners of other weeks, and then again when Morag is telling Paris that he can’t say Morag has no reason to be around him except for cheap rent and free food without insulting Morag. This is pretty much exactly how I feel when Alexis Hall diminishes his success as an author, and it feels very much like Hall is talking out both sides of his mouth. But hey, what do I know.