Hannah
I had high hopes for this book, having read that Blake Crouch was a great alternative for fans of Andy Weir. Unfortunately aside from being a sci-fi (strong on the science) it lacked all of the charisma and character building I've loved in Weir's books. I was bored out of my mind reading Upgrade, the characters felt flat and had no redeeming features, so much that I just didn't care about the plot. Found myself skimming the last 30% just to get it over with.
I started out liking this book, but about 40% through the protagonist became supremely unlikable. It read like the starting of an incel with zero respect of the boundaries of others and incredibly self-centered. Whilst it's fine to have different types of characters in books, this was written in a way that I felt was trying to portray him as likeable and romantic character, which really put me off. The extreme random referencing of geek culture was ok at first but did start to drag. Unlikely to continue on to book 2.
Reluctant to give this an actual rating as my view is very personal to me.
From the synopsis of this book, I wasn't anticipating quite how heavily this was going to be about her mum's losing battle with pancreatic cancer. Whilst I knew it was mentioned, it took up the vast majority of the first half and was quite detailed. As someone who recently lost her own mother to pancreatic cancer I'm not sure I'd have read this had I known just how in-depth this aspect was going to be.
Having enjoyed the first 2 books, I really did not enjoy the third instalment. To me it felt so far removed from the first 2, I could have easily been convinced it was written by a different author.
The school life is gone from this book, and key personalities seem to have taken a turn for the worst. I found the storyline dull whilst also being difficult to follow.
Whilst I took a few tips from this book, I've realised definitely not the target market. This book is largely aimed at huge, American family homes with massive storage spaces and hundreds of belongings.
The book felt like a series of Instagram posts, I'm not sure you'd gain much versus checking out their IG page.
Advice has been split up into some oddly specific categories that won't be relevant for most people, for example travelling by tour bus, shoe designer, nurse during the week baker on the weekend(?!), party planner, basketball player. The list goes on...
On the plus side, though it wasn't intended this way, the book did make me want to declutter just from feeling so overwhelmed at the amount of items featured in this book.
Unfortunately the sample download of this book didn't really represent what fills the rest of this book. There are few useful paragraphs and tips, but I didn't enjoy the rest. For starters it's filled with spirituality which was not clear from the sample, I wouldn't have purchased it had I known (should have read the reviews better!).
Secondly, I feel she comes from a place of privilege and hasn't suffered many of the issues she seeks to give advice on. One particularly laughable quote about quitting smoking “All you have to do is stop. All the work is in letting go of your self-created attachment to cigarettes”. I don't even smoke myself, but this seems to ridiculously simplify the issue of addiction.
On top of this, the book is littered with her amazing experiences travelling the world, casually name dropping countries like they're going out of fashion. It felt more braggy than inspiring. I don't think they added to the book at all.
There was nothing that pulled me into this book. The characters felt flat, the plot didn't seem to exist and it threw in too many words without explanations (for example, the use of “trannies” for transport).
After noticing it had taken me 10 days just to read 12% and also feeling like I couldn't really recall anything from what I'd read so far, I decided this was a DNF for me.