Reviews with content warning for Blood - Normal People

I truely loved this book so much. I liked the unique writing style and I found the characters very loves me. I was rooting for Marianne and Connell the entire time as the grew up together. This book break my heart in many pieces but that just shows how invested I was. I can’t believe I hadn’t read this sooner. This book is definitely one worth the hype!

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michaelion's review against another edition

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reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

These people are literally, as I'm sure others have said, so normal. I don't mean that derogatorily. I really enjoyed the book. I like slice of life even though I don't read or watch it as much as I should. Not as much attention is put into this genre even though it's just as important as any other.

My only issues are with the way it was written. That's more of a personal thing though. I find dialogue to be the most important part of a piece of media involving two or more people and in this book there are no quotation marks. The writing is very, very good, so the issue was when it flipped from being internal and external. Although I'm sure that was intentional. My other issue is I didn't like how their stories went. But that's another personal thing! If only they knew how to just talk to each other! Even still I think they're the kind of people who will get married in the future whether or not they work on themselves. They're it for each other. I like that, but I wish they were healthier!

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tatjanasbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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paulaks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Something that came to my mind while reading, was that this book (the way it´s written and curated) gives me major: artsy depressed feministic not like other girls traumatised literature student vibes. I do not know if this makes sense at all but in my head it does. Now decide by your reaction if you´re intrigued or annoyed. Now to my thoughts:

This book is A LOT while being quite uneventful. Being character driven, it follows 2 characters over 4 years. Documenting my life for that long would be the most boring piece of literature but Connell and Marianne are SO complicated and traumatized. That has to be my first warning: The amount of triggers that are passively talked about is worrying. Please check those before reading (I tried to list some). Overall the reading experience was quite intense. Since there are no quotation marks, the thoughts, storytelling and conversations blend in together which can be confusing but makes for a really intriguing experience. The writing style was 10/10 so no need to continue on that.

Honestly, you can categorize the people that read this novel by their rating into two groups: The group that didn´t build a connection, were annoyed or angry or aren´t empathetic (= ratings lower than 2.5). And the ones who identified themselves with character traits or are just really empathetic (= rating 2.5+). Just a little thesis of mine, don´t take it to seriously. But what you should take serious is the fact that if you can´t build any connection with one of the MCs by the 50% mark, there is little to no point in reading this. I was quite invested so here´s my experience: Their decision-making had me on my toes, even tho the way they continued making wrong choices was exhausting. But it´s definitely interesting how trauma can shape a human being. This aspect shocked me a few times and made me question my own behaviour.

Lastly, the title choice is well done. Who is normal? Are we normal people? Do we want to be normal people? At least I was trying to answer that question.

My rating right now would be a 4 star. The potential was there and maybe I´m the problem but sometimes there were illogical moments and situations that made me uncomfortable (most of the time with Marianne). As you can guess by my long review, this is a great book for a group discussion but be aware that this would reveal a lot of personal stuff since Normal people is an intimate story.

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