Adeline
3.25 stars Speculative literary fiction following Kathy a carer in an alternate 90s who reminisces on her days in a special British boarding school alongside her childhood friends Ruth and Tommy.
At first I liked the world building, the subtle hints at something not being quite right about the characters, the speculative elements being buried under layers of everyday life, a twisted version of a classic boarding school story, making it like a magical realism novel.
However most of the novel felt like a slog, not a good sort of slow burn. There was a lot of repetitiveness (in words like « anyway » « what I’m saying is » or « the point is, « whether I mean is ») that quickly became annoying. Also the narrator had a lot of meandering thoughts with superfluous details, not only in her thoughts but also the dialogue shared between other characters. To be honest I hate when people take forever to talk about stuff in real life so it definitely negatively impacted my enjoyment of the story. The most interesting pieces of lore ended up being stuffed towards the end of the book, and I wished it had been better displayed throughout the story.
Kathy as the narrator came across a bit as a dull not being helped by the writing. I liked her relationship with Tommy, though he wasn’t a compelling character either, but I really felt for them. Ruth was a bully so I really didn’t care for her.
Because of that pacing and the lack of compelling characters, this really lacked emotional impact for me so this ended up being a very mixed experience. Overall a great concept with interesting world building but the execution left me underwhelmed.
3.25 stars Speculative literary fiction following Kathy a carer in an alternate 90s who reminisces on her days in a special British boarding school alongside her childhood friends Ruth and Tommy.
At first I liked the world building, the subtle hints at something not being quite right about the characters, the speculative elements being buried under layers of everyday life, a twisted version of a classic boarding school story, making it like a magical realism novel.
However most of the novel felt like a slog, not a good sort of slow burn. There was a lot of repetitiveness (in words like « anyway » « what I’m saying is » or « the point is, « whether I mean is ») that quickly became annoying. Also the narrator had a lot of meandering thoughts with superfluous details, not only in her thoughts but also the dialogue shared between other characters. To be honest I hate when people take forever to talk about stuff in real life so it definitely negatively impacted my enjoyment of the story. The most interesting pieces of lore ended up being stuffed towards the end of the book, and I wished it had been better displayed throughout the story.
Kathy as the narrator came across a bit as a dull not being helped by the writing. I liked her relationship with Tommy, though he wasn’t a compelling character either, but I really felt for them. Ruth was a bully so I really didn’t care for her.
Because of that pacing and the lack of compelling characters, this really lacked emotional impact for me so this ended up being a very mixed experience. Overall a great concept with interesting world building but the execution left me underwhelmed.