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A review by clairespaulding
Daydreamer: A Proxy Short Story by Alex London
4.0
ARRGGHGHS:LJDFLKS THIS BOOK GAVE ME SO MANY EMOTIONS AND WOW
Such flawed, lovable, well-developed, great characters!! Such excellent plot twists, pacing, and structure! Such immersive worldbuilding! Great queer representation! JEWISH REPRESENTATION, CAN I GET A HELL YEAH?? Plus, a main character named for Sydney Carton and some darn fantastic A Tale of Two Cities parallels: be still, my heart.
I found this book so satisfying in every way, from the first page to the last sentence. The characters' relationships developed naturally but strongly, and the unresolved romantic tension between Knox and both Marie and Syd was beautiful and complicated and satisfying without taking anything away from the arguably more important bonds of friendship that formed between all three. The worldbuilding, despite seeming to borrow practically all of its elements from the other YA dystopias I've read in the past few years (the plot, setting, and general tone all felt like a mashup of Feed, Legend, and Cinder to me, though all three of those elements worked a lot better for me in this novel than in Feed and Cinder), still managed to feel fresh and exciting. The plot twists were unexpected and yet made sense. The ending was utterly satisfying without pulling any punches.
And yet, bafflingly, the writing itself had two major flaws: dizzingly frequent POV shifts, and a tendency to over-explain characters' thoughts. The first issue, in which the point of view would jump between characters willy-nilly in the middle of scenes and even paragraphs, seemed like an amateur writing mistake, and yet somehow it permeated the entire novel (how did an editor not catch this?). Besides being lazy writing--we are always told the thoughts of each protagonist in every scene, rather than ever having to infer their thoughts or motivations from their dialogue and actions--this habit resulted in a few very confusing instances where an ambiguous piece of internal monologue could belong to any of the POV characters in the scene. The other flaw in the writing, a tendency to over-explain characters' thoughts and motivations to the point of redundancy and cliche, went hand in hand with the overuse of POV shifts.
In the end, the many strengths of the writing and the story far outweighed those flaws, and I loved this book a lot. On the level of character and story, Proxy was much stronger and more satisfying than most other YA dystopias I've read recently, despite sharing a lot of surface similarities to the other recent offerings in the genre. I couldn't put it down.
Such flawed, lovable, well-developed, great characters!! Such excellent plot twists, pacing, and structure! Such immersive worldbuilding! Great queer representation! JEWISH REPRESENTATION, CAN I GET A HELL YEAH?? Plus, a main character named for Sydney Carton and some darn fantastic A Tale of Two Cities parallels: be still, my heart.
I found this book so satisfying in every way, from the first page to the last sentence. The characters' relationships developed naturally but strongly, and
And yet, bafflingly, the writing itself had two major flaws: dizzingly frequent POV shifts, and a tendency to over-explain characters' thoughts. The first issue, in which the point of view would jump between characters willy-nilly in the middle of scenes and even paragraphs, seemed like an amateur writing mistake, and yet somehow it permeated the entire novel (how did an editor not catch this?). Besides being lazy writing--we are always told the thoughts of each protagonist in every scene, rather than ever having to infer their thoughts or motivations from their dialogue and actions--this habit resulted in a few very confusing instances where an ambiguous piece of internal monologue could belong to any of the POV characters in the scene. The other flaw in the writing, a tendency to over-explain characters' thoughts and motivations to the point of redundancy and cliche, went hand in hand with the overuse of POV shifts.
In the end, the many strengths of the writing and the story far outweighed those flaws, and I loved this book a lot. On the level of character and story, Proxy was much stronger and more satisfying than most other YA dystopias I've read recently, despite sharing a lot of surface similarities to the other recent offerings in the genre. I couldn't put it down.