nigmatillium

Reading the title of the book along with the series name, I thought this was a spy story, some exciting police business at least, some investigation, detective work, guns, bad guys, stuff like that. ‘The Making of Jonty Bloom' was nowhere close to what I was expecting. I might have expected something like that because the last Barbara Elsborg book I read featured some of those things.

I am not at all disappointed I didn't get that, don't get me wrong. I loved this book, I loved Jonty and I loved Devan and I want to write this review then go right back to continuing reading the series.

Barbara Elsborg is definitely one of my favourite authors, I don't have a neat ordered list, but her books are not a miss with me, so far at least. All of her characters are unique and the plots are amazing. Barbara Elsborg makes up some really intriguing and entertaining story lines and manages to keep me glued to her books. Here, in ‘The Making of Jonty Bloom', I wanted to both keep reading, see what's happening next and thread carefully because I was worried about what might happen next.

While the plot made me worry, I had no doubt about Devan and Jonty, they were clearly made for each other, I loved seeing them together, although they sure took their sweet time. I so wanted to finally see them get on with it, and when it finally happened it was great.

I usually lean more towards one of the main characters, but here I loved both of them just as much. And I loved the way they talked openly, honestly, and about everything. How they simply asked if there was something they wanted to know, how good listeners they both were and how they learned so much about one another just by paying attention. They started great and kept being great and they were great together.

Needless to say Brad made me anxious for a good portion of the book. I was expecting him to pop up almost every page and that was not fun. Griff sucked, Ravi sucked, everyone else was okay. Ish. I'm still debating about Willis, Alan, and the sous-chef, and I'm not convinced about half of the parents either, the other half sucked. Felt sorry for Tay, and the lady from the salon opposite the laundrette was cool.

I think I covered most of what I wanted to say (although I am wondering what's the deal with the parents. I see it's common in Barbara Elsborg's books for the parents to be awful) and I'm off to check out the next of Jonty's adventures.

I wasn't exactly in the mood for this book and I would have set it aside, to be read at a later time, but I saw it is really short, so I thought why not. And the book was quite endearing, in a weird way.

What I liked the most about it is the writing style. There are so many writing styles and somehow I seem to stumble upon some really good ones lately-and I love that for myself. I have no doubt that Mieko Kawakami is a very skilled writer just by reading this short story. She managed to write precisely like I'd imagine a pre-teen to write. The description was all over the place and it felt so right. The main character's own voice came through so naturally. At the same time some parts of the book were pretty intense too.

While I enjoyed the book, I also have some curiosities about it. I have some questions that got no answer and I'm curious about both the main character and Ms Ice Sandwich. But, well, overall it was quite a nice read.

I will start by saying I am not a huge SF fan, I read it sometimes, usually I like it, but I don't go out of my way to pick up a SF book. I listened to this one because I wanted something in the background while doodling and since I kept seeing the book around and was one of the first to pop up when looking up audiobooks, I said why not.

I read the other reviews on this book and I see that most readers really love it. I am kind of in between, I can't say I loved it, but it wasn't terrible either. For one, I liked reading a book from where I knew some quotes without knowing where they are from, and I must agree there are some great one-liners in the book, but I only laughed once.

Somehow the storytelling read more like a documentary to me and some of the characters seemed to be forgotten sometimes. I keep thinking I might have missed something, but looking up what that might be, I can find nothing. I think I simply should have read this book when I was a pre-teen. That being said, still a nice read.