Reviews

Crossing Paths by Debbie Robson

dacejav's review

2.0

I'm impressed with myself that I read it all, I was not expecting that from myself from how things took off in Latvia... but then synchronicity, I guess - I got Covid and a lot of time to read.

A very strange book. A book about BookCrossing, which she compares to "a parallel universe." She does create a parallel BookCrossing, where everybody seems to be a bookcrosser, they fall in love with each other after one message, they confess love in journal entries, they pass the same book back and forth to each other several times, the books seem to follow them, books travel from the US to Europe in less than a week, and everyone interferes with other people's business. I must say that I prefer the real BookCrossing to this fantasy BookCrossing.

I could not feel Jane's grief and she often really acted like a mad woman. And what was so special about her that all the men were falling head over heels over her? Finally, all that new age stuff was getting too much for my liking towards the end. And finally finally, there were quite a few typos - misspelled words, mixed up names (somebody had corrected one such place with a pencil) and two places where time was mixed up - PM with AM.

What I liked about the book - BookCrossing references, familiar names such as over-the-moon and MissMarkey, travelling (I often Googled up pictures of locations and discovered some nice ones on the way) and bookish references (most literature seemed too depressing for my liking, but maybe I will note down some AUS/NZ related books and authors). Ah, and even if it seems (and IS) too long with 600 pages, it reads faster than I thought because of many book journals and half-pages.

shahrun's review

3.0

I have been really fascinated by the concept of this book since I first heard about it, so I was very excited to read it. I found it fairly easy to read (although the jumping around of characters and a few other bits did confuse me). I didn’t like the main characters of Jane and Jeremy as their instant obsessive love and the lengths they went to wasn’t very believable. I did enjoy some of the other characters, especially Ruth, who was my favourite. I think the author tried to include too many good ideas to be able to execute them all in one story. It might have been better to make this story idea into a trilogy to do everything justice.

alissabar's review

3.0

I had never heard of BookCrossing when I signed up to win a free copy of this on goodreads. I was just interested in the description of the plot. After receiving my book I was a little worried I might have to become a BookCrosser to understand what was going on, but happily that wasn't the case.

I enjoyed the journey of this book, and especially liked some of the characters I met along the way (Mary Christmas/Darling and Ruth/moonrunes). I had a hard time connecting with Jane/Ali/Sarah/ect. I understand her mental state wasn't the best, but I really didn't care for her most of the time. That surprised me since everyone she met in the book was inexplicably drawn to her or fell in love with her. There were quite a few books mentioned in this work and I wish I had been more familiar with them.

juniperusxx's review

2.0

I'm a bookcrosser and I would have liked to love this book as much as I love bookcrossing, but unfortunately this book was a great disappointment. I became annoyed while reading this book.

The thickness of the book shocked me when I saw it for the first time. I would have liked to read the story in much more compact form, now there were too many books and characters, too much dialogue - the amount of countries and continents also made me confused. I certainly had difficulties to follow the characters which had similar voices. The love affairs didn't sound believable at all, and the whole book described bookcrossing as travelling, making themed releases all over the world and hunting for intimate relationships. The bookcrossers were described as 'serious' and 'profound' analytical readers, as literature professionals, not 'ordinary' people. Unfortunately this book doesn't offer a realistic picture of bookcrossing for someone who doesn't know what bookcrossing is about.