Reviews by booksarebrainfood

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296 reviews by:

booksarebrainfood

2 Did Not Finish

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Open Water

Caleb Azumah Nelson

4.0

emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty

Akwaeke Emezi

3.0

dark emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

The Book of Form and Emptiness

Ruth Ozeki

4.0

challenging emotional hopeful mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Bunny

Mona Awad

4.0

dark funny hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Luster

Raven Leilani

5.0

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

incredible

Heaven

Mieko Kawakami

3.0

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

This was a little bit of a slog to get through, I think it might have worked better as a short story. It did raise a lot of interesting philosophical questions as Kawakami is really good at doing, and also had some really beautiful writing at times. I don’t want to critique the underdeveloped characters because that’s sort of Kawakami’s thing to use characters as vehicles for her philosophical explorations, which usually I don’t mind. From a reading experience though I just found this story a little bit flat and tedious to wade through.