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alliegray's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
clouds_on_clouds's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
The way the characters in this book are intertwined and linked is beautiful.
ciaram657's review
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
ksmckiernan's review
4.0
I liked this book but I got distracted and put it down for a week and then lost track of all the characters, so I would say read the bulk of it over a weekend if you can. I think the last third was more of a slog because I’ve just read a few other books by English authors and everything started to overlap. But I loved the format. Who needs periods anyway?
plindq's review
emotional
informative
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
5.0
immaculately interwoven, brilliant.
slugluv's review
4.0
such diverse, believable, and sometimes unlikeable characters! Evaristo does a really fascinating job exploring each character’s psyche. there’s a lot of potentially triggering content in this book, including sexual assault, emotional abuse, racism, and transphobia. The book went a little long for my taste and it felt like some of the attitude and slang of the characters was forced at times, and still this was a powerful book. I liked how the author explored a lot of topics about gender, sexuality, race, and capitalism through the conversations the characters have.
lfera8's review
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
3.0
lara16's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
poorlywordedbookreviews's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
4.0
As part of my attempt to tackle my obscene physical tbr (since I have zero faith in my ability to stay away from the second hand book stores and stop adding to it) I did this on library audio - and despite the huge cast of characters, the structure made sure it wasn’t a jumble of ‘who says what now?’.
This book explores the stories of 12 women, mostly black and British, born over the span of a century, with their individual vignettes all interweaving in various ways. It’s highly readable, Evaristo is a great story teller, and a pertinent read for black history month - showing the everyday stories of the women, and how being black has impacted them in a multitude of differing ways. Viewing any group of people as a monolith is as damaging as ignoring them. These women are complex, dealing with issues of not only race, but class, gender, sexuality, trauma, and not all of them are likeable.
Thoroughly enjoyable, completely recommend. Only warning, occasionally some of the dialogue with a couple of the characters feels unnatural, like they are talking in rehearsed sound bites, things they’d say to a friend via text - that they’d drafted in Notes first - rather than organically in conversation. But these instances only jarred because of the excellent subtlety, and complexity, of some of the other conversations, which the interweaving multiple POVs serve to emphasise.
luuluubuu's review
4.5
loved everything except for the line breaks mid sentence (eg
she loves
him
)
that was interesting in the beginning but became annoying after some time.
she loves
him
)
that was interesting in the beginning but became annoying after some time.