Bloody hell. I mean, it's well written but Elio just gives total serial killer vibes doesn't he?

Like his

low key stalking, wishing Oliver was dead, forcing sex on others, his secretly wanking into Oliver's swim trunks when they're not even on speaking terms, wanting to EAT his swim trunks...

!? And that's just the start. Or perhaps it's his wanting to

cut Oliver's heart out

?

And that's before we get onto him

fucking the peach

!? Then describing it like

it'd been raped

? Not to mention

leaving it for hours on the side whilst he has a sticky nap covered in peach slush, only for Oliver to pop right in and willingly, INSIST on EATING. THE. DAMN. THING

!

When I read the blurb, I thought this was going to be, and I quote "like Saltburn but without the disturbing stuff". If anything, this felt more disturbing than Saltburn 😂

Ultimately is a book about obsession. Is it love? I'm not sure. At it's heart it's about a horny 17 year old, obsessively lusting over 24 year old college professor who's only there for the summer.

One quote from Elio sums the story up pretty well:

Though it's one of the classic sci-fi books, it was written in the 50s, and therefore needs to be considered as such.

In short, everyone in a village falls asleep mysteriously and the army is called in to stand around looking confused. When they awake, all the women are pregnant. Lots of assumption that it's female hysteria, before they go 'oh actually seems a bit odd it's happened to ALL these women at once. Eh, I guess it's another species then that's infected them but best not tell any of them because some of them are suicidal and wouldn't it be cool to see what happens when they give birth to a monster'.

I started this book on kindle and my goodness did I struggle. The premise was interesting, no issues there, but there was an awful lot of waffling from dull male characters that was difficult to get through. I finished it on audiobook and at about 3 hours and much easier to get through. Until I started on audiobook, I had no idea what the book was about beyond the village being mysteriously asleep but felt the story and ending was very predictable. Perhaps this is from other books I've read which have followed this original idea or maybe I've read it in the past and not remembered it. Perhaps it was just super obvious. It was a tidy ending.

I didn't find it creepy in the slightest. For the most part, the kids don't do much and we don't see them much on account of lots of dialogue between a couple of main characters about them.

My main issue is the way that the women were described at points and how the book was pretty entirely men talking. For a book that centres around all women becoming mysteriously pregnant, it would have been really interesting to explore more on how they experienced it all. It was clear that the author had no interest in this.

It's odd, I want to rate it higher but I also want to rate it much lower.

I mean, it's a rom-com set in a lakeside town about an author with written block, getting it on with another author/guy she fancied in college. It has it's flaws but ultimately it's a great, feel good rom-com.

Some things of note:
-Bless her for

not reading the letter from her Dad immediately.

I'm glad she

found she had so many more of them to hold onto.

-The sarcastic banter. Top notch.
-You could cut the sexual tension with a knife.
-The part where

her father's affair partner forces her to listen to what she has to say when she's clearly already crying and not ready to/interested in listening was brutal. Just because you feel like you need to say something doesn't mean she has to listen!

-

The cult stuff

felt a bit odd to include in a rom-com of this vibe. I'm assuming that this is the cater to

the true crime obsessed?

-Them finally

breaking the sexual tension with sex... In the tent by the burnt out graveyard of the cult? After they'd both been so affected by seeing it? But somehow immediately forgot about that?

Like what?
-The 'this can't get any worse, then the Labrador farted' bit 😂
- Further to this,

if they had just set the tent up for keeping their laptops dry if it rained, surely they wouldn't have brought sleeping mats and sleeping bags? So how did they spend the night? Surely it was the most uncomfortable place to have sex then sleep?

- Is it just me that found the ending really

stupid? How is 'oh yeah, I ignored you after my wife turned up because I wanted to go back with her when she asked but actually after 24 hours I guess I like you a lot more' good? That's so hurtful!

- Mix that with

the 'marriage is the worst and if I think about it, you're the only person where the idea of it doesn't fill me with utter dread' and it's comes off even stranger.

Flash to the epilogue where

they're getting engaged a year after the start of the book/meeting (again). I get that he was saying marrying her didn't feel like an awful idea but with it being in what was basically a speech about marriage filling him with dread it felt odd.

When I started the book, I hated it. It was the 'I'm a romance author and just luuuvv talking about my life in third person, oh what am I like!' but at the start that almost did me in but this was thankfully dropped almost immediately.

I almost stopped reading pretty quickly but I'm glad I kept on with it and ultimately, it was a really fun rom-com and exactly what I was in the mood for.

This book felt like a real slog. I started reading this in January for a book club in February. Despite continually trying to chip away at the audiobook, I didn't finish it until August.

There's nothing wrong with it per say. It's long but mostly it was that it's one of those contemporary Irish books that I seem to have read a lot over the last few years, where it's a lot of repressed trauma and angst, then they chuck in some

homophobia

, someone

being raped

and/or

underage sex/drugs/alcohol

and call it a masterpiece. This had all of the above and it didn't add anything. But equally, without it would there even be a book? It's that kind of subgenre I suppose. That about sums up my experience with it I suppose. There were parts where I was curious to find out what happened next but I really, really didn't enjoy and the ending was abrupt but both the lead up and the ending were obvious. I didn't like any of the characters but they did feel well fleshed out.

I don't know. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood to be reading this. Though I'm not sure I'd ever be. You'd think over eight months there'd be a point you'd finally get into it but I didn't find that with this book.