Meh. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads, but it really gets 2.5 stars from me.
I have mixed feelings. On one hand, the book has a very solid message–about how some of us feel like ‘aliens’ in the world–in other words, outcasts who don’t belong. I dig that message. On the other hand, the prose was very flat for me. This was a quick read not because the writing was so great, but because it’s really more of a novella (a slim 150 pages) and because the chapters are SO short. Seriously, some chapters are one sentence long. Like this:
Sometimes, this is a whole chapter.
Or this:
Here’s a deep, profound statement that is SO deep and SO profound that no other words are necessary in this particular chapter.
(That last sentence was longer than many of the chapters in this book.)
I kept reading because I wanted to see if the author would turn the story into a true science fiction tale (which she really doesn’t). I will say that the ending was probably my favorite part of the book. I can’t say that I enjoyed the characters much, if at all. Mal is kind of relatable most of the time but other times he just annoyed me because he is so stinking emo. I was sad that his dad deserted the family and his mom was an alcoholic, but…I don’t know. I didn’t care about his character as much as I should have.
To sum it up, I think the book had the potential to be better than it is and I was left disappointed.
