I'm a Mona Awad truther but this was my least favorite from her I've read. I didn't understand from the start and it never began to make sense, which really hindered my experience... It felt repetitive and nonsensical. I usually like her weird, surreal style this was just too confusing for me. Too long for the payoff at the end. Too little explanation and character development. Honestly could not say for sure a single thing that happened in this book lol. 2.5 ⭐ sorry

Really good story + writing, but felt a little dry so some of the emotional turmoil fell flat. I'd like to revisit it in the future, I didn't internalize as much in the last 50 pages because I felt bored of the writing style.

3.5 ⭐

This book is lazily written, as is The Great Believers by the same author. It's clear with the short chapters, excessive dialogue, frequent line breaks, that Rebecca Makkai doesn't really know what she's writing. It's frustrating to read because she occasionally has really poignant, good sequences of writing, then goes back to dull descriptions of things nobody cares about. The things she chooses to focus on/analogize read weird.

The story for this book itself is boring and repetitive, because the central story has the bare minimum to be a murder mystery. Most of the book rehashes the same 5 plot points, the eventual reveal isn't shocking or satisfying, the dialogue is overused and doesn't add much but boredom. The characters aren't developed, the MC is super annoying tbh, the only character who uses they/them is quirky and has purple hair because... Obviously??

Another annoying part of her writing is her inability to go below surface level - just mentioning racism and sexism, cancel culture etc isn't enough to warrant a theme and just comes off as shallow. Instead of adding depth to the story it makes it look like she's writing for woke points, then starts talking about some other random thing.

This book seems pretty praised, so not sure what I missed. I didn't feel that fast paced or exciting vibe other reviews have. If anything it was worse than The Great Believers, which I didn't love but enjoyed a lot more. This'll probably be my last book from this author, I wish she could just take more time and make her writing more consistent, it would be much more interesting

3.5 ⭐

Edit on 11/28/22: changed from 4 to 5 stars

2.5 ⭐

There are parts of this story that are more interesting than others. The parts I found most compelling were the scenes focusing on Dodo and Monkey Pants together (the chapter "The Marble" was incredible, the best part of the book for me) and the water-to-the-mikvah storyline, once it got going. There was a lot going on and it took a while for me to get into it. Still, I think it did a good job showcasing this community and the relationships within it. Some funny, so heartfelt, some really sad moments. What pulled me out was the large number of tangents, sometimes overwhelming amount of characters and lack of setting (for a book that focuses on the town itself so much)

I really enjoyed the themes throughout about support, community, and grief. McBride did an excellent job of showing our innate need for connections with others. This is a very easy story to connect to your own life, your own human-ness, that I thought was special