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A review by samanthabryant
Atlanta Burns by Chuck Wendig
3.0
I'm pretty ambivalent about this book. Things I liked:
-The problems the kids were facing felt more real than such things often do. These weren't cute or easily solved problems, but deep and complicated bullying and social standing kinds of issues
-Atlanta, the title character, had been through trauma, and her mixture of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms felt real to me. She was neither Pollyanna nor Wednesday Addams. Her PTSD reactions were powerfully portrayed
-The way that all the characters were gray, in that bad guys had good points and good guys had bad points. (I liked this AND also thought it might be part of the problem with the story).
-The writing itself. I still admire the author's way around a sentence and his really creative metaphors when describing feelings or even just scenery. Lots of sentences I would have wanted to highlight, if I were the kind of monster who wrote in books.
Things I didn't like:
-The relentless darkness. So few moments of light of any sort, even when Atlanta was making friends. As a reader, I could have used some uplift once in a while. Reading it felt brutal enough that I sometimes considered not finishing the book at all.
-The graphic dog related violence (DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF ANIMALS BEING HARMED IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU)
-The overarching messages about dealing with bullies. Not that I need a book to have a "message" per se, but this one is an issues-related book and seemed to want to take a stand of some sort about bullying. The mixing in of adult villains muddied those waters, and at the end, I wasn't sure what the moral heart of the story was. This is the main thing that left me feeling ambivalent . . .and maybe the *is* the point: the ambivalence. But it didn't have a satisfying feeling of clarity.
-The epilogue/ending: I can't tell you what it is without spoiling the book, but I will say that this part felt tacked on to me and didn't build naturally out of events of the book. Too pat.
So, there you go. I liked it, but couldn't love it or hate it. The murky morality might have been the point, but it made it a harder read.
-The problems the kids were facing felt more real than such things often do. These weren't cute or easily solved problems, but deep and complicated bullying and social standing kinds of issues
-Atlanta, the title character, had been through trauma, and her mixture of healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms felt real to me. She was neither Pollyanna nor Wednesday Addams. Her PTSD reactions were powerfully portrayed
-The way that all the characters were gray, in that bad guys had good points and good guys had bad points. (I liked this AND also thought it might be part of the problem with the story).
-The writing itself. I still admire the author's way around a sentence and his really creative metaphors when describing feelings or even just scenery. Lots of sentences I would have wanted to highlight, if I were the kind of monster who wrote in books.
Things I didn't like:
-The relentless darkness. So few moments of light of any sort, even when Atlanta was making friends. As a reader, I could have used some uplift once in a while. Reading it felt brutal enough that I sometimes considered not finishing the book at all.
-The graphic dog related violence (DO NOT READ THIS BOOK IF ANIMALS BEING HARMED IS A TRIGGER FOR YOU)
-The overarching messages about dealing with bullies. Not that I need a book to have a "message" per se, but this one is an issues-related book and seemed to want to take a stand of some sort about bullying. The mixing in of adult villains muddied those waters, and at the end, I wasn't sure what the moral heart of the story was. This is the main thing that left me feeling ambivalent . . .and maybe the *is* the point: the ambivalence. But it didn't have a satisfying feeling of clarity.
-The epilogue/ending: I can't tell you what it is without spoiling the book, but I will say that this part felt tacked on to me and didn't build naturally out of events of the book. Too pat.
So, there you go. I liked it, but couldn't love it or hate it. The murky morality might have been the point, but it made it a harder read.