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fkshg8465's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
A story that brings life to completion, and a story with so much more to be told. One that lets my imagination fill in the gaps most satisfactorily.
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infertility, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
seventhswan's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
I can appreciate that Go as a River is a beautifully descriptive, thematically complex book that a lot of people will really enjoy, but despite seeing this logically, I didn't particularly like it. The first half of the story was tediously slow - I enjoyed the second half a lot more, but they felt like different books to me. I also found that a lot of nuance, depth, and sympathy was given to characters like Victoria's father and brother, while more interesting characters like Wil and Ruby-Alice were deprived of agency and left quite one-dimensional. Their portrayals didn't match with what Victoria claimed to feel about them. And, honestly, I just didn't care about or connect with Victoria that much even though she was objectively going through many difficult things. Pretty much every other character seemed to have a more interesting perspective on what was going on.
The descriptions of the book's setting and the changing time periods were the highlights of this story for me, and I did feel emotional in places purely because of the amounts of suffering various characters went through. However, everything wrapped up so neatly and relied on so many improbable coincidences that it was just not a book that really worked for me.
The descriptions of the book's setting and the changing time periods were the highlights of this story for me, and I did feel emotional in places purely because of the amounts of suffering various characters went through. However, everything wrapped up so neatly and relied on so many improbable coincidences that it was just not a book that really worked for me.
Graphic: Racism and Pregnancy
Moderate: Ableism, Domestic abuse, and War
Minor: Animal death, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Miscarriage, Misogyny, and Sexual violence
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