bumblemee's Reviews (258)

This book had an amazing concept, which was partially well executed. In my opinion the pacing was weird; there were parts that dragged and parts that were going by way too fast. I think this story worked better as a movie. I also got very frustrated with the main character from time to time, he was a little full of himself and deeply insecure at the same time. That is a very normal teenager/young adult state to be in, but in his case, I would've loved to not experience it while being in his head. - I also felt like Artemis was solely constructed to be this "ideal girl" to chase after (mainly: a little too cool for you, self-confident in what she does but just so unhappy with the way she looks - which she can obviously be "saved from" by the protagonist), which was one of the reasons why I wanted to throw this book against the neatest wall sometimes. 

This is my favourite book for a lot of reasons. A few of them include:
- the phrase "I'm platonically in love with you."
- having a friendship as the most important relationship in general
- the very relatable struggle of not knowing what to do with your life, what you want from it and feeling lost
- starting my love for fiction podcasts

... I will leave it at that because I still don't know how to put my love for this book into proper words. 

This book is masterfully crafted in my opinion. And it made me cry. I don't even know how to structure this review. 

Maybe I start with Sadie, Sam and Marx (!) since we follow their rather complicated friendship through several years. All of them are written amazingly well in my opinion, the way they develop over time just makes so much sense and makes them feel so real that you could swear you recently watched them talk about one of their games on a panel at a convention or something. Sadie and Sam are people that aren't easy to get along with and watching them form this friendship was heartwarming, while also being a little heartwrenching, because the book makes it clear quite early on that it won't all be sunshine and rainbows. I have complicated feelings about both of them, I liked them a lot while disliking them to a certrain degree if that makes sense. The things that frustrated me were very in-character for them. Sometimes you saw so clearly where their communication went wrong  while having to watch them act how you knew they would anyway. Argh. Meanwhile, Marx is just so extreamly easy to love it's incredible. He is kind and smart and empathetic and understands people so well.. idk, if you're able to finish this book without loving him please let me know, I want to know if it's possible to dislike that man. 

I also loved the focus on video games. One can tell that Gabrielle Zevin loves games herself and put a lot of research into representing this aspect of this book well. The love for video games, their infinite possibilities and infinite tomorrows is everywhere: how Sam, Sadie and Marx talk about them, how they are used to explore themes, how much effort was put into taking you on a journey to develop a game (I really want to play some of these completly fictional games), how they form a connection between characters. Everything in this book is a love letter to video games and I think especially people who love them as well will greatly enjoy this aspect of the book (like myself). I don't think you have to be a fan of video games to enjoy this book though.

A few short things: I liked how this book did a good job (in my opinion) to show problematic things without making them seem okay. As well as the way a situation is always cleary framed by who is experiencing it. Gabrielle Zevin also does this thing where she reveals important details or includes a little interview snippet from the future at just the right time to be impactful. 
Last but not least: This is one of those books where you will at some point go "Oooohh!" because the title and the cover suddenly make so much sense. I loved it, they were chosen perfectly.

While I absolutely loved this book, as one can tell by this review, I do think that one should critically reflect the disability rep. I'm not disabled so I am going off of other peoples voices here, who talked about how Sams disability was treated as something to overcome instead of being a part of his identity. He resents his foot and the difficulties it brings a lot and I feel like especially for non-disabled people, stories about disability often become either "inspiration porn" or a story about a sad person who hates this part of themselves. These tropes can play into harmful stereotypes, which is why I think it's important to keep that in mind and check ones own assumptions concerning disabled people.

A Neon Darkness was a must-read for me because Damien was a character I could not make up my mind about while listening to The Bright Sessions. ... To be honest, I don't think the book helped that much on that front, but it was great. 
I got through this book SO quickly; while being rather slow, it was still a pageturner (to me). It does an amazing job of making you feel more conflicted about Damien than you ever did before. I was stuck between feeling for him and wanting to yell at him constantly. He is one of those characters where you understand where he is coming from while knowing that it doesn't excuse his current actions and you get more and more frustrated watching him fuck up constantly. 
I don't know if I reccomend reading this if you don't like him at all in The Bright Sessions. It may give you perspective, it may make you hate him more. I was not surprised by anything that happened in this book, but I still (clearly) enjoyed reading it a lot. I was emotionally invested af, maybe because this book confronted me with tiny dark fractions of myself that I don't like that much. Reading this made me think a lot. 

Since I'm writing this review more that a year after finishing the book I am not able to provide in detail content warnings, but as always a lot of others did that well.

This book was exactly what I expected it to be: Very over the top with a lot of things and very engaging. 

It has been a while since I actually finished it so I can't go into any detail anymore or provide accurate content warnings, but luckily the latter has been done well by the many other people that read this book.