“A money spinner” and I don’t care in the slightest. Madeline Miller challenges, questions, calls out and exposes Mythology and all it’s been twisted into whist writing literal poetry. I could get lost in all of her work, even a book that is tiny as this. 

Feeling harsh, I did enjoy this. I loved the concept of the novel, and I will no doubt pick up the next book in the series with hopes of it reaching 3-4 stars. So we keep our fingers crossed that the writing improves and perhaps a new editor if it was even edited at all?!

Positives first… the start was great, good banter between the main protagonists and their friends. The general overall concept loved it. Really for the first few hundred pages honestly thought this might be 4 starts… 

But I despise the jealousy trope and unnecessary YA behaviour. Drama for the sake of reaching a word limit? Just don’t. Additionally no one needs recaps on what happened on the previous page. Or how a particular person fits into the equation when it’s already been explained. You could safely cut this book down to half and you wouldn’t be missing anything. And that’s not being dramatic, it’s just a fact. 

I won’t harp on about my issues with names of the characters, other than when in one chapter alone 5 of the characters all started with C… it was like a nursery rhyme. 

I liked what this book tried to achieve. I don’t like how childishly it was played out and written. And I did not enjoy how prevalently it reminded me of so many other great (and not so great) novels/series. We also won’t discuss how predictable every element of this was as a result of it being similar to so many other books…. 

I am looking forward to hopefully the next instalment being leaps and bounds better. 

How I wish I read this book when I was younger. How this book also makes me wish I studied literature. How it makes you question literally everything that humanity is. 

I’ve read few books that have sparked so much desire to read more into them, find essays and varying breakdowns and so on. The countless notes and thoughts that come from reading this are astonishing. 

So happy to have finally gotten around to 1984, sorry to the other books I put in the back burner as soon as I made it past the first page. This may be one of the rare books that I come back to and actually increase my star rating after a while.

Its never ideal when you go into a book with incredibly high expectations. Every part me wishes that this was a five-star read. It should be based purely on the countless moments that I cried; on the many nights I have stayed up thinking about the circumstances of the characters. Sobbing for the pure fact that the words written are all but too true and a daily reality for so many people in our world, still to this day over a decade on. 

I have read a few reviews and noted that a fair few people have written that they wished Rasheed had changed his ways or that his story finished differently, as cruelly as the life he enforced for example. Or that the book was just a constant continuation of one horrible situation after the other. That the brutality towards the women wasn’t necessary in such detail… But is that not the reality for so many people? None of these aspects of the book bothered me – made me cry yes, but I don’t feel like they negatively impacted the story at all. In fact, I didn’t expect the ending of this book to finish as it had, at no point did I ever expect a ‘positive’ ending. I was both pleased and disappointed by it, in some ways it didn’t feel believable, in others it’s a notion to keep on fighting and never giving up. A beautiful and positive message in world surrounded by cruelty. Not that the entirety of the ending was positive but for the most part it was hopeful and love prevailed, albeit heartbreaking. 

A lot of reviews also have also mentioned the lack of political siding by the characters Mariam & Laila. And the next to no insight except that of those that surround them. Even then it doesn’t go too deep into it. I was not off put by this, also I cannot have much of opinion without reading other non-fiction text. Nor after that would I have a right to form much of an option on their situation or political sidings, and why or why not Mariam & Laila did or did not have strong opinions. This was a novel about two women and how their lives entwined, yes, the political and social forces around them controlled their lives but the novel was an insight into how they lived, fought, loved and kept on going despite the world around them.  

Without breaking down the entirety of the novel I am not sure why I am so reluctant to give this five-stars. Perhaps it just wasn’t as powerful as I was expecting. Or perhaps on a different day it would be five stars. It may just be that I wished it was twice as longer and explored their lives on an even deeper level. Today however it is 4.5 stars, raw emotional, gut wrenching, triggering and a piece of literature that makes you question, think and seek more information. And that’s exactly when I plan to do.