Nothing to See Here

Re-Read thoughts:I picked this for book club and decided to re-read it as a refresher, this time via audiobook from the library. It holds up for me! I couldn't put it down again. It's written in a relatively simple way that still manages to just convey who each character is so efficiently and move the pace along briskly. Just a fun read!———Original Review:What a wonderful book.There was something so charming about it to me. The main character isn't exactly a new archetype: the narrator who has had a tough upbringing, yet is naturally witty and intelligent, able to raise herself up, only to come crashing down at times due in part to her inability to fit in. But hey, it's a fun archetype when it's done this well. The character feels fully alive for this entire book and is just fun to spend time with. I actually thought it was really interesting that this was written by a male author and told in a first person viewpoint from a female character, with almost all the important secondary characters female as well. Maybe I don't read enough, but that seems very rare. The character relationships felt authentic to me and were very touching. I loved how the narration effortlessly jumps around in time. The narrator will recall a past event and began discussing it in the past tense, and as the scene develops, it somehow just gradually becomes the present tense, and as a reader you are just living in that moment now, completely invested in these new surroundings and it's happenings. Then suddenly you are snapped back into the real present and the weight of that event washes over you. Just beautifully done. I haven't even talked about the main thrust of this story yet, which I kind of wish I didn't know about before starting it, so I won't even mention it here even though the cover art gives it away. I'm a sucker for this kind of “magical realism” and I loved it here, I was constantly arguing with myself about what it symbolizes and how it would develop in the story. This is one of my favourite books I've read in awhile. It gives me the same feelings in a lot of ways as when I read [b:The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 1618 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1479863624l/1618.SY75.jpg 4259809]. Shout out to my wife for recommending this to me, she had taken the ebook version out from the library on a whim since it was trending and looked interesting, and after she got a few chapters in she found a hard copy at the library so that I could read it as well.