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thereadingrunnner's review
2.0
I received a copy of this novel in a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for my honest review.
I had to spend a few days thinking about the best way to review this book. It started out as a fairly "normal" story with the focus being on Lu, a wife and mother who is struggling. The novel begins with Lu and her husband George dropping off their daughter, Pippa, at college for her first year. Lu has always been very close with her daughter but has felt them growing further and further apart. At the same time, sudden empty nesters, Lu and George are finding it difficult to connect and George is getting fed up with his wife's inability to accept that Pippa is growing up. All the while, Lu is feeling misunderstood and alone, while Pippa is at college feeling lonely and finding solace in chats with one of her professors. George, owner of a winery, is somewhat of a cliché, jerk of a husband character.
While not a unique story, it was readable, and I think for many would be relatable. Move ahead to ~Chapter 40. Am I still reading the same book?!?! What just happened?!?! We head for a trip to bizarre-land. Suddenly we've switched genres and are now in a sci-fi novel. The front 2/3 of this novel and the back 1/3 could not be any more different. It is incohesive. It is odd. It was not for me.
There is however some backstory to this novel which I think needs to be addressed and to me, it helped to make sense of the story. Cai Emmons was diagnosed with ALS. This book was published in September 2022. Emmons passed away <4 mos later in January 2023. When she reached the last 1/3 of this novel in the writing stage, her disease had progressed to the point where her speech was no longer understandable. She could still write, and had so much going on inside, but she was not able to speak to those around her, and knew the inevitable end of the disease. As ALS does, she had become trapped in her body. What happens in this novel and how it ends now makes a lot more sense to me, and perhaps due to the time constraints unfortunately present in getting this novel published, there wasn't time to make the transition to what happens more cohesive. I applaud Emmons for not just her courage in life, but in constructing a daring story, and I hope that writing it in some way helped her cope. It wasn't for me, but upon reflection, I understand it and it is fitting.
If anything, read this, because I promise you may never see a twist like this in a novel again.
I had to spend a few days thinking about the best way to review this book. It started out as a fairly "normal" story with the focus being on Lu, a wife and mother who is struggling. The novel begins with Lu and her husband George dropping off their daughter, Pippa, at college for her first year. Lu has always been very close with her daughter but has felt them growing further and further apart. At the same time, sudden empty nesters, Lu and George are finding it difficult to connect and George is getting fed up with his wife's inability to accept that Pippa is growing up. All the while, Lu is feeling misunderstood and alone, while Pippa is at college feeling lonely and finding solace in chats with one of her professors. George, owner of a winery, is somewhat of a cliché, jerk of a husband character.
While not a unique story, it was readable, and I think for many would be relatable. Move ahead to ~Chapter 40. Am I still reading the same book?!?! What just happened?!?! We head for a trip to bizarre-land. Suddenly we've switched genres and are now in a sci-fi novel. The front 2/3 of this novel and the back 1/3 could not be any more different. It is incohesive. It is odd. It was not for me.
There is however some backstory to this novel which I think needs to be addressed and to me, it helped to make sense of the story. Cai Emmons was diagnosed with ALS. This book was published in September 2022. Emmons passed away <4 mos later in January 2023. When she reached the last 1/3 of this novel in the writing stage, her disease had progressed to the point where her speech was no longer understandable. She could still write, and had so much going on inside, but she was not able to speak to those around her, and knew the inevitable end of the disease. As ALS does, she had become trapped in her body. What happens in this novel and how it ends now makes a lot more sense to me, and perhaps due to the time constraints unfortunately present in getting this novel published, there wasn't time to make the transition to what happens more cohesive. I applaud Emmons for not just her courage in life, but in constructing a daring story, and I hope that writing it in some way helped her cope. It wasn't for me, but upon reflection, I understand it and it is fitting.
If anything, read this, because I promise you may never see a twist like this in a novel again.
novelvisits's review
4.0
My thanks to @duttonbooks for an electronic ARC of #Unleashed.
I loved the first 70% of
I loved the first 70% of
quietlex's review
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This one was kinda off the wall for me. It starts out as a normal coming of age story, following a daughter going away to college for the first time and her parents’ relationship falling apart. Suddenly disaster strikes in the form of wildfires scorching the land and burning down everything in its path, and the mother…
burns down their home after discovering it survived the original wildfire, becomes a fugitive because she believes she’s committed a crime and even buries the “weapon” aka the lighter she used, lives off the land and begins the journey to find her daughter, drinking out of puddles and eating berries along the way, TRANSFORMS INTO A LITERAL DOG, an actual animal, a black lab, and she finds her daughter. What the fuck. Seriously this Harry Potter shit came out of nowhere.
burns down their home after discovering it survived the original wildfire, becomes a fugitive because she believes she’s committed a crime and even buries the “weapon” aka the lighter she used, lives off the land and begins the journey to find her daughter, drinking out of puddles and eating berries along the way, TRANSFORMS INTO A LITERAL DOG, an actual animal, a black lab, and she finds her daughter. What the fuck. Seriously this Harry Potter shit came out of nowhere.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
obviouschild96's review
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
shonatiger's review
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley and to Dutton/Penguin Group for access to this eARC.
I finished reading this unusual story yesterday, and I’m still a little unsettled by it. It’s a fairly quick and undemanding read.
Unleashed opens with Lu and George driving their daughter, Philippa (Pippa to her mother, but she wants to be called Phipps) and her cat, Alice, to college (UCLA). Right from the start, Phipps comes across as somewhat strange and disconnected from the world—teenage angst, maybe, or possibly more. The family lives in Sonoma, where George is a vintner. Lu has mostly been focused on raising Phipps, but used to be George’s employee at the winery, and she still occasionally helps out.
Lu is experiencing disaffection, and initially it appears that this is stemming from her separation from Phipps, to whom she is perhaps unusually close. However, the feeling builds, until she feels alienated from her husband—which feeling is worsened by him confessing to an almost-affair. In addition, it is fire season in their wildfire-prone area; and when the worst happens, Lu is alone at home, George having travelled to Florida. After her evacuation to the local high school, she does something I found really terrible—and then something exceedingly strange happens.
There are interesting characters in the book, but I could not connect with any of them, and found none of them likeable—not even Phipps, who is the one I felt the most empathy for. I found Lu really very annoying and selfish, and am not sure if she was supposed to read that way. There is some mention of Lu’s ethnic background, but that isn’t really explored—for whatever reason—and, in the end, it feels gratuitous. After giving up on the characters, I tried to connect with the story. Possibly because I have been reading a lot of climate fiction recently, I found elements of it in the book, but the author didn’t explore that angle. The focus is rather on the characters’ reactions to the stresses they are under. I was also fairly disappointed by the lack of resolution for most of the characters—although I do confess that there was really only one resolution I would have been satisfied with (which I can’t explain here as it would give the story away).
Altogether, not the book I expected, and that was fairly disappointing. I think Unleashed may be enjoyed by a very specific subset of people. I found the author’s note enlightening; be sure to read it, because it makes a connection between what happens in the book and what was happening in her life at the time, and, in a way, explains the strangeness of the plot. Is this Weird Fiction? Not quite, but it skates very close to it.
An unsatisfying review for what was for me a less than satisfying read; but, I would love for people to read the book, and tell me what they think.
My rating: 6/10.
I finished reading this unusual story yesterday, and I’m still a little unsettled by it. It’s a fairly quick and undemanding read.
Unleashed opens with Lu and George driving their daughter, Philippa (Pippa to her mother, but she wants to be called Phipps) and her cat, Alice, to college (UCLA). Right from the start, Phipps comes across as somewhat strange and disconnected from the world—teenage angst, maybe, or possibly more. The family lives in Sonoma, where George is a vintner. Lu has mostly been focused on raising Phipps, but used to be George’s employee at the winery, and she still occasionally helps out.
Lu is experiencing disaffection, and initially it appears that this is stemming from her separation from Phipps, to whom she is perhaps unusually close. However, the feeling builds, until she feels alienated from her husband—which feeling is worsened by him confessing to an almost-affair. In addition, it is fire season in their wildfire-prone area; and when the worst happens, Lu is alone at home, George having travelled to Florida. After her evacuation to the local high school, she does something I found really terrible—and then something exceedingly strange happens.
There are interesting characters in the book, but I could not connect with any of them, and found none of them likeable—not even Phipps, who is the one I felt the most empathy for. I found Lu really very annoying and selfish, and am not sure if she was supposed to read that way. There is some mention of Lu’s ethnic background, but that isn’t really explored—for whatever reason—and, in the end, it feels gratuitous. After giving up on the characters, I tried to connect with the story. Possibly because I have been reading a lot of climate fiction recently, I found elements of it in the book, but the author didn’t explore that angle. The focus is rather on the characters’ reactions to the stresses they are under. I was also fairly disappointed by the lack of resolution for most of the characters—although I do confess that there was really only one resolution I would have been satisfied with (which I can’t explain here as it would give the story away).
Altogether, not the book I expected, and that was fairly disappointing. I think Unleashed may be enjoyed by a very specific subset of people. I found the author’s note enlightening; be sure to read it, because it makes a connection between what happens in the book and what was happening in her life at the time, and, in a way, explains the strangeness of the plot. Is this Weird Fiction? Not quite, but it skates very close to it.
An unsatisfying review for what was for me a less than satisfying read; but, I would love for people to read the book, and tell me what they think.
My rating: 6/10.
literateworld's review
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
abbennsky's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
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