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gobbledybooks's review against another edition
5.0
The characters were so beautifully fleshed out that I felt their joy and pain throughout. Amazing.
catherine_yikes_'s review against another edition
2.0
This book was written beautifully with some pretty good characterisation (I personally don't mind a quite MC), but I think this sort of story would have benefited from stronger ongoing themes and an all round more satisfactory ending. Sure, Beck get's the girl, but this isn't a romance so that doesn't feel enough. It doesn't feel like all the little events of his life we get to see are building to something, making each life he leads feel disjointed.
It was, as others have mentioned, just not a children's book. It was unnecessarily graphic and would disturb and confuse most below 15, but was also just unrelatable for most young adults (the age gap romance).
I liked the beginning (it helped that I listened to this on audio and the actor had a brilliant scouse accent) but then things got...choppy?
It was, as others have mentioned, just not a children's book. It was unnecessarily graphic and would disturb and confuse most below 15, but was also just unrelatable for most young adults (the age gap romance).
I liked the beginning (it helped that I listened to this on audio and the actor had a brilliant scouse accent) but then things got...choppy?
janebranson's review against another edition
5.0
I have finished this. It is stunning, and I am a wreck.
trusselltales's review against another edition
3.0
Hard hitting and beautifully written, but a very harrowing read.
deb_reads_books's review against another edition
4.0
I have to say that although this book is down as a YA read, I think I'd probably withhold it from all but our older students, 16+. The abuse at the beginning and the subsequent violence is quite disturbing. The story is told in an easy, relaxed style and seamlessly switches between Peet and Rosoff (who finished it after Peet died). That in itself was enough for me to keep reading, what talents they are. Wow.
aaron_griffiths's review against another edition
3.0
I read this book as part of the CLIP Carnegie book club at work, and was surprised that it was shortlisted for the award. The award itself is based around YA novels, and even though it is targeted at 16+, I felt as if it would be better suited for a slightly older reader who would fit into the New Adult category.
This book needs to come with a trigger warning for the first part, due to the content. Within the first 60 pages, the reader discovers that the protagonist "Beck" is orphaned at a young age and sent to Canada where he lives among the Catholic Brothers. This is the point the trigger warning comes into play. While there, he is abused both physically and sexually by the Brothers. Even though this fact is only lightly brushed upon, it still came as a bit of a shock to me whilst reading and it is a fact that played on my mind whilst reading the rest of the novel.
Whilst reading, I found that the story seemed extremely repetitive and not really progressing in any way. The whole novel was made up of Beck constantly travelling from one place to another, staying for a while and then moving on again. Once I had read the second part of the novel and moved onto he third, I felt as if everything I was reading I had previously read in the book, even though the location was different with slightly different events happening to Beck himself. The ending I felt was a slight let down as I felt the relationship that was created between Beck and Grace (an older women, who is also a mixed race white - Native American), could have been developed further to give the reader more satisfaction about the events of the whole novel. These were the reasons why I only gave it 3 stars.
Meg Rosoff completed this book for Peet after his death, which was carried out seamlessly. While reading, I did not find myself noticing and changes in the tone or storyline, which would have caused me as a reader to notice the two different authors contribution to the novel.
Ultimately, I wanted more from this novel that what I actually got from reading this. I found myself loosing my way when reading and I feel that if there was slightly more structure to the novel as a whole I wouldn't have had this trouble and would have enjoyed it more than I actually did.
This book needs to come with a trigger warning for the first part, due to the content. Within the first 60 pages, the reader discovers that the protagonist "Beck" is orphaned at a young age and sent to Canada where he lives among the Catholic Brothers. This is the point the trigger warning comes into play. While there, he is abused both physically and sexually by the Brothers. Even though this fact is only lightly brushed upon, it still came as a bit of a shock to me whilst reading and it is a fact that played on my mind whilst reading the rest of the novel.
Whilst reading, I found that the story seemed extremely repetitive and not really progressing in any way. The whole novel was made up of Beck constantly travelling from one place to another, staying for a while and then moving on again. Once I had read the second part of the novel and moved onto he third, I felt as if everything I was reading I had previously read in the book, even though the location was different with slightly different events happening to Beck himself. The ending I felt was a slight let down as I felt the relationship that was created between Beck and Grace (an older women, who is also a mixed race white - Native American), could have been developed further to give the reader more satisfaction about the events of the whole novel. These were the reasons why I only gave it 3 stars.
Meg Rosoff completed this book for Peet after his death, which was carried out seamlessly. While reading, I did not find myself noticing and changes in the tone or storyline, which would have caused me as a reader to notice the two different authors contribution to the novel.
Ultimately, I wanted more from this novel that what I actually got from reading this. I found myself loosing my way when reading and I feel that if there was slightly more structure to the novel as a whole I wouldn't have had this trouble and would have enjoyed it more than I actually did.
razreads's review against another edition
2.0
Complete review available: Beck
I really wasn't a huge fan of this. I liked the premise, and really wanted to know more about what historically happened in Catholic accommodation for orphans, but Beck quickly moved on from this and began a journey across Canada. A different plot from what I envisenged, but I was happy to go along with it as a character exploration or a tale of adventure on a journey across Canada. Instead, Beck was a broken, bit-ty book - there seemed to be a multitude of miny plots, but they weren't sewn together very well and instead presented a choppy, bit-here-bit-there sort of tale. Definitely not among my favourites on this year's Carnegie shortlist.
I really wasn't a huge fan of this. I liked the premise, and really wanted to know more about what historically happened in Catholic accommodation for orphans, but Beck quickly moved on from this and began a journey across Canada. A different plot from what I envisenged, but I was happy to go along with it as a character exploration or a tale of adventure on a journey across Canada. Instead, Beck was a broken, bit-ty book - there seemed to be a multitude of miny plots, but they weren't sewn together very well and instead presented a choppy, bit-here-bit-there sort of tale. Definitely not among my favourites on this year's Carnegie shortlist.
innerweststreetlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
I don't think I could have read this as a teenager or young adult and enjoyed it. Even now I have mixed feelings about it. The 4 stars are for the quality of the writing, which is excellent, especially for a posthumous collaborative work. The story is bleak. It is as exactly bad as you think it is going to be, and then some. It is just a little too hard for me to suspend disbelief enough to really think the ending was even remotely likely, if this was real life that kid froze or starved to death on a highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere. But then, Beck (and the rest of us with him), had suffered enough.
emilier_h's review
Completing a reading challenge, just ran out of time to finish but, I felt the book was very slow and difficult to engage with due to not understanding the topics mentioned in the book at the time.