Sunday, August 17, 2014

All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Rating: 4 stars

     Mafia princess in a slight future (2083) dystopian, trying to distance herself from mafia. Also, Romeo and Juliet. And chocolate.

     Okay, its less cheesy than my synopsis and actually pretty good. I really loved the narrator. She had her head on straight and for the most part, her priorities in order. Her demeanor also wasn't always perfect and she made mistakes, which was good. I wish she pulled the mafia princess card more, but I v respect her for not. The characters were very relatable and interesting. I liked the writing style but it seemed inconsistent. I thought Anya's NBs were too infrequent that it caught me off guard when it happened. Another long note, instead of only one, I think would have helped too.

      I've also read Elsewhere and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin, and I really enjoyed them both. I didn't read the summary as i was in a hurry at the library and I picked it up since I liked her other work and I went into it thinking it was a cute complementary where a girl loves chocolate or something. Then I thought it was some AU 1920s  and then I got frustrated at the rest of the series' covers.
 
 I did enjoy the book but it didn't feel like a dystopian, or even the future. There is very little change from then and now, which is okay, but it's marketed at a dystopian. There should've been more urgency about the lack of water, which I think is going to be expanded on in the later books, but there needed to be something in this book to differentiate the time. I wish they had a dialect or more futuristic things, other than the iPad type things. Also, i'm still confused as to why chocolate was banned and I feel like there should've been more about the caffeine ban.

  Overall I did enjoy the book very much, I read it all in one sitting. I really loved the characters and related to them. However the lack of world building and dystopian characteristics, and the inconsistent writing style was frustrating.

No comments:

Post a Comment