I was about ten minutes away from sobbing ugly sobs in a Whole Foods. Luckily, my butt started hurting from the hard chairs up in there, and I moseyed on home to finish the book there. I then proceeded to sob those ugly sobs all by my lonesome for about half an hour. This book was really good but I was very sad after finishing it.
I mean, if you’re prone to crying at fiction (like I am), just know this book will probably get you.
What’s great about this book is it’s not just about one thing. At the heart of it, it’s about female friendship, but it’s also an adventure story. A spy story. A war story. It’s a thriller, and it’s historical fiction. It’s a story about women pilots. And it’s a story about what it’s like to live in an occupied country during wartime, and a story of what it’s like to be a prisoner of war. It’s also got a little bit of experimental style going on, and it’s very, very smart (perhaps too smart for its own good).
I say it’s maybe too smart for its own good because a lot of the members of my book club had a hard time understanding what was going on because they weren’t used to tricksy books. I had no trouble with it, but I did have a bit of an issue getting super engaged until about a third of the way through, at which point it became riveting.
But, this book isn’t straightforward, and you should know that. This book is one that you should absolutely stick out if you’re wanting to give up on it. It’s one of those books where the payoff makes up for everything.
This book has been reviewed to death (and liked by all) here on CBR, so I was pretty confident I would like it. I even knew it would probably make me cry, and what the general plot was. But I really wasn’t prepared at all for what I got.
I will read the sequel eventually, but you gotta give me a minute. I’m not ready for that shit.
I love love love this book. Enough so that seeing the title this morning made me start crying at work. Darn you! It is the book of the Ugly Cry. I’m so glad you liked it. It’s one of my favorite recommendations.
I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make anyone cry!
(Although I did wonder if I should put that particular line in the title . . . but then did it anyway.)
I especially love the way the female friendship is portrayed in this book. This is one of the books that makes me truly jealous of teens today. They truly do not know how much better this is than ANYTHING written for teens when I was their age. Anyone who critizises YA books for being stupid should read this and get back to me.
I mean, we had SOME good stuff. But not much. And certainly nothing like this book!
Most Norwegian teen lit when I was growing up was dour social realism stuff, with the teenagers struggling with HIV, drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, sexual abuse and/or neglect from parents. It’s why I so whole-heartedly embraced the epic fantasy genre once I got fluent enough in English to read and enjoy it and had enough money to buy my own books (in those days, no one was bothering to translate fantasy into Norwegian, it was way too niche for that. Same reason the library stocked hardly any of it).
Ugh, message fiction. Yuck.
This book, man. It destroyed me.
I know! It’s terrible but also great.