The Borrower

Since writing reviews of popular fiction is neither my day nor my night job, I'm not sure I can be bothered to spend too much time explaining why I disliked this book so intensely. I will, however, sum up my reaction in convenient list form:
–pick a theme, author, PLEASE. She bounced around from one theme to structure the novel to another, with no transitions and no internal logic. If the chapter headings and some of the plot was supposed to mimic the plots of famous children's books, why not spend a weeeeeeeeeee bit of energy to make sure that remains consistent throughout? Nope–we'll bounce from children's books to Russian revolutionaries and there will be nothing inherent in the characters or their stories to link these things compellingly for the reader.
–if you are an unreliable narrator, it would truly help if I gave half a shit whether what you had to say was true or not, and what your motivations might be. As it is, you are so flat and featureless and unconvincing, I stopped caring.
–librarian? Have you ever met a 26-year-old librarian? Trust me they are unlikely to be this bland. Librarianship these days can be truly revolutionary in a way this narrator never appears.
–why realism? This story line begs on its hands a knees for a bit of magical realism or fantasy. Why weigh it down with reality? You could queer this story so convincingly! Why didn't you??
–speaking of queer. Oy. Apply your politics with a sledgehammer much? Again–potentially interesting story line bludgeoned to death by ham-handed writing.
–and, to be fair to the author, I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator's simpy, dingbat voice as she “read” Lucy was infuriating. Made her even less likeable and believable than the mere words on the page managed to do.
Try again.