A review by harleighc
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Did not finish book. Stopped at 80%.

idk if it’s just me but F.Scott’s writing absolutely sucks the life out of me. I’m in 7th grade, so I think certain parts and words go over my head. Other than that I think the main thing is the way his characters interact, especially main characters and side characters. For example, Rosalind and Amory bump into each other accidentally and start a deep philosophical conversation?!?!! I really liked Amory and Tom as characters, but when a character wasn’t meant to stay long term you could tell and nothing they did felt real. I also feel like this book is was unnecessarily flamboyant, which I get is a stylistic choice, but smaller parts were also left out and nothing happened logically. I still have no idea who Amory’s dad is and it’s driving me crazy. I also think progression of time was very hard to tell but maybe that’s because I read this so slowly. Either way, I hated reading this book with the exception of a few select Amory moments that I related to.  I did a report on F. Scott and Zelda as people in school and the more I learned the more this book began to sound like F.Scott writing down his rants and occasionally adding some plot.