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storyrecap22's review against another edition
3.0
Find more reviews here: https://bookwormlifeblog.wordpress.com/category/reviews/
REVIEW: The Love That Split the World was advertised as Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’ve only seen one of the two but FNL happens to be one of my favorite shows, so I was all in. One half of those comparisons delivered (perhaps a little too much) and the other…. well…we’ll get to that later.
This story was a hard one to latch onto, if anything because it was hard to find its place. The time travel was never quite time travel-y. The supernatural aspects felt a little more like watered down magical realism. The mysteries never felt that mysterious and the stakes, the tensions, were never worthwhile enough to actually care. All that’s left to solidify this journey is Emily Henry’s impressive writing and general curiosity about where the heck she’s going with this.
I’m a sucker for a good romance, especially when the love interest, Beau, is quite literally a carbon copy of Friday Night Lights character, Tim Riggins. Same physical description, same family situation, same hobbies, same views on life, sports, and carpentry. In fact, there are multiple conversations in the book about Beau, that take place, nearly verbatim, about Tim Riggins in FNL.
I don’t know if these similarities were intentional by Henry, but it sure was noticeable and at times a little off putting. Regardless, I liked Beau Wilkes. I liked the thought of him and Natalie together, but unfortunately this book came down with a hard case of insta-love. The reader never gets the chance to watch these two fall for each other. They meet and BAM. Love. If you’re going to sell us on the kind of love great enough to split the world, it would be nice if it was more gradual than “Hello. Nice to meet you.”
The story hinges on Natalie being given a mysterious, prophetic message to “save him”—whoever “him” is. Going into this, I assumed it was Beau, but the plot misdirects in several areas as Natalie worries that it is her father, her brother, or her troubled ex-boyfriend, Matt—all of whom I cared little to nothing about. The author never gave me reason to. Because of this, the tension and the drive of the story falls flat. It doesn’t help when the mystery of Natalie’s “time travel” is being solved in possibly the least interesting way ever—therapy. A good chunk of the book takes place in Natalie’s sessions with a research psychologist in a stagnant search to find the mysterious, deity-like woman who gives her the message to “save him.”
The pacing was odd, staccato at times. The minor characters early on tricked us with relevance only for the plot to sputter and forget about them entirely. For a book about time travel, it feels like the plot spends an extraordinary amount of time standing still. That said, I didn’t hate it. It is impossible not to give credit to the book’s uniqueness. It doesn’t fit in any category well, but the premise from start to finish makes you think. It hobbles on to a rather confusing yet somehow impressive finish that makes me want to rate it higher than it probably deserves.
THE VERDICT: Emily Henry’s novel is full of beautiful writing and rich coming of age lessons of love, loss, and sacrifice. Despite the misleading yet fascinating premise, the story as a whole stood on a foundation of an insta-love romance with a long, slow moving, and questionably worthwhile journey. 3 out of 5 stars.
Find more reviews here: https://bookwormlifeblog.wordpress.com/category/reviews/
REVIEW: The Love That Split the World was advertised as Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’ve only seen one of the two but FNL happens to be one of my favorite shows, so I was all in. One half of those comparisons delivered (perhaps a little too much) and the other…. well…we’ll get to that later.
This story was a hard one to latch onto, if anything because it was hard to find its place. The time travel was never quite time travel-y. The supernatural aspects felt a little more like watered down magical realism. The mysteries never felt that mysterious and the stakes, the tensions, were never worthwhile enough to actually care. All that’s left to solidify this journey is Emily Henry’s impressive writing and general curiosity about where the heck she’s going with this.
I’m a sucker for a good romance, especially when the love interest, Beau, is quite literally a carbon copy of Friday Night Lights character, Tim Riggins. Same physical description, same family situation, same hobbies, same views on life, sports, and carpentry. In fact, there are multiple conversations in the book about Beau, that take place, nearly verbatim, about Tim Riggins in FNL.
I don’t know if these similarities were intentional by Henry, but it sure was noticeable and at times a little off putting. Regardless, I liked Beau Wilkes. I liked the thought of him and Natalie together, but unfortunately this book came down with a hard case of insta-love. The reader never gets the chance to watch these two fall for each other. They meet and BAM. Love. If you’re going to sell us on the kind of love great enough to split the world, it would be nice if it was more gradual than “Hello. Nice to meet you.”
The story hinges on Natalie being given a mysterious, prophetic message to “save him”—whoever “him” is. Going into this, I assumed it was Beau, but the plot misdirects in several areas as Natalie worries that it is her father, her brother, or her troubled ex-boyfriend, Matt—all of whom I cared little to nothing about. The author never gave me reason to. Because of this, the tension and the drive of the story falls flat. It doesn’t help when the mystery of Natalie’s “time travel” is being solved in possibly the least interesting way ever—therapy. A good chunk of the book takes place in Natalie’s sessions with a research psychologist in a stagnant search to find the mysterious, deity-like woman who gives her the message to “save him.”
The pacing was odd, staccato at times. The minor characters early on tricked us with relevance only for the plot to sputter and forget about them entirely. For a book about time travel, it feels like the plot spends an extraordinary amount of time standing still. That said, I didn’t hate it. It is impossible not to give credit to the book’s uniqueness. It doesn’t fit in any category well, but the premise from start to finish makes you think. It hobbles on to a rather confusing yet somehow impressive finish that makes me want to rate it higher than it probably deserves.
THE VERDICT: Emily Henry’s novel is full of beautiful writing and rich coming of age lessons of love, loss, and sacrifice. Despite the misleading yet fascinating premise, the story as a whole stood on a foundation of an insta-love romance with a long, slow moving, and questionably worthwhile journey. 3 out of 5 stars.
Find more reviews here: https://bookwormlifeblog.wordpress.com/category/reviews/
madsbrown23's review against another edition
3.0
I love Emily Henry and her writing style but the plot twist at the end made this book fall a little flat. It was generally a good book but I wanted more.
hilola's review against another edition
3.5
Very weird story
I understood half of it and I dient like the “open” end
I understood half of it and I dient like the “open” end
apetite's review
5.0
I love this so much that there is an alternate reality where this book was written and loved into existence by me.
pinetrees's review
2.0
I'm giving this book two stars because it's clear that Henry understands how to write well, she just doesn't do it very often.
This book read less like a book and more like a millennial's chosen classes textbook sampler, covering subjects from feminism, Native American culture, psychology, queer characters, repression, PTSD, Einstein's theory of relativity, the Multiverse Theory, what love is, the duties of being a parent, various dream states and so many other things I am not going to add. Other than reading like a senseless information dump this book also has one of the worst cases of insta-love I have ever suffered through. these two characters, who I did not care about in the least, somehow fell in love in the course of two pages then our wonderfully feminist, strong willed, intelligent main character gives up literally everything to run off with one of the two teenage alcoholic while the other, who tried to rape her, dies in a hospital bed.
When it comes down to it I didn't care about these characters. I didn't want them to succeed, I didn't want them to fall in love, and I didn't want them to end up together. This book was stupid and I don't recommend it.
This book read less like a book and more like a millennial's chosen classes textbook sampler, covering subjects from feminism, Native American culture, psychology, queer characters, repression, PTSD, Einstein's theory of relativity, the Multiverse Theory, what love is, the duties of being a parent, various dream states and so many other things I am not going to add. Other than reading like a senseless information dump this book also has one of the worst cases of insta-love I have ever suffered through. these two characters, who I did not care about in the least, somehow fell in love in the course of two pages then our wonderfully feminist, strong willed, intelligent main character gives up literally everything to run off with one of the two teenage alcoholic while the other, who tried to rape her, dies in a hospital bed.
When it comes down to it I didn't care about these characters. I didn't want them to succeed, I didn't want them to fall in love, and I didn't want them to end up together. This book was stupid and I don't recommend it.
r_reynolds's review
Too YA for my reading tastes right now, but enjoying the mythology aspect of The Grandmother.
buttles's review
medium-paced
3.0
I love time travel books and movies, so the premise of this book was really intriguing to me. I enjoyed the buildup of the characters and plot but the vague ending left me with more questions than answers.