I’ll explain why. The book starts with Rachel, a college student in New York. She’s crushing on her handsome English teacher, Zahid. They hook up and Zahid leaves a lovestruck Rachel back at home before jetting off to his homeland of Pakistan to visit his mother for the weekend. But not before he delivers the devastating news to Rachel that he’s just not that into her. They’re pretty much the same age so I’ll let it slide. But, before he does this, Rachel offers to pet-sit his dog. Rachel! You’re killing me. Apparently, she doesn’t understand the concept that growing attached to your lover’s dog is not the best way to get over them.

Throughout the book, Rachel longs for Zahid to want her again, and not see her as an immature student of his who he slept with during a lapse in judgment. Cue Rachel’s mom, Becca. First of all, the name Becca is just the worse name for a mom ever. Any time I picture a Becca, I see a skinny blonde with an unhealthy obsession with Sephora. But that’s just me. So Becca is Rachel’s mom whose asshole husband left her for a younger woman, Mandy. The name Mandy is perfect for that character, by the way.

Becca has been spending her time up in their fahhhncy Connecticut beach house, sulking in her loneliness and also mourning the loss of her poodle. I totally forgot to mention the poodle. The Kleins had a beloved poodle who died recently and guess what, Zahid’s dog is also a poodle. This seems like too much of a coincidence for me, because when have you ever seen more than one poodle in three days, but I’ll let it slide. Zahid returns from Pakistan, and Rachel has the glorious idea to bring him to her beach house where her lonely, vulnerable, and superrich mother awaits.

You can probably see where this is heading. Zahid arrives in all his glory, the novel really tries to make a point out of his super sexiness. But it’s a bit excessive. Becca is you guessed it, interested. And so is he. The two share flirty banter that manages to not be super-awkward and cringey even though if I heard my mom talking like that I would throw up and scream:)

The part of the book set in Connecticut is good and I truly enjoyed reading it. I loved the idyllic setting mixed with the secrets and tensions between the characters and the sense of seclusion, like their little beach town is its own world.

But the book starts to lose its footing when it makes the mistake of involving a plethora of many other characters. Detracting away from the storyline in the quaint beach town, Dermansky involves a slew of uninteresting, nearly indistinguishable characters. The other characters are Khloe, a lesbian financial analyst who is so in love with herself that I was tempted to close the book when any chapter was narrated by her. The character of Khloe makes me cringe and feels more like a caricature of a millennial than a character with any specificity of depth given to her. Similarly, Kristi is Khloe’s sister with an equally boring and unappealing personality. Also, the names, come on! Then there’s that movie star that Rachel hooks up with at the beach whose only personality trait was his abs. The author of this book just put in little to no effort into making these characters unique or interesting which is super lame and a bit of an insult to the form of the novel.

I wish the characters had more distinction between them, and every time you think you are coming close to going beyond their surface, the next chapter starts and you are back where you started. And I know I sound like every freshmen year English teacher, but all of the characters barely have any apparent motivations.

This book is fun to read, and you can definitely get lost in the lives of the characters. But don’t read this book if you want to think deeply about anything for more than three seconds. Harsh! Sorry, Marcy Dermansky (I like your name!).

Let me preface this by explaining why this book did not sit so well with me. Honestly, I just really hate when things/people are praised excessively and I don’t agree with said praise. This author has won the Nobel Prize and has been knighted by the monarchy. And he’s written two books. So, I knew this guy was like, a huge deal. This is why I started to get confused halfway through the novel when it had failed to show me some of the magic and luster I was expecting.

The novel takes place primarily in an English boarding school in the countryside. Kathy, the narrator, is retelling events from her childhood at this boarding school, called Hailsham. Except, this boarding school had something - for lack of a better word - weird going on. The students are treated strangely by their ‘caretakers’ and more than a few secrets and questions lie beneath these swampy marshes. Swampy marshes are kind of a big thing in this book, probably to set the scene that the boarding school and the book are just so eerie I say with an eye roll.

Ishiguro is skilled at setting the scene, and therefore the tone of the novel. He describes the setting of the boarding school in a gloomy and slightly ambiguous way, that leaves the reader questioning and slightly uncomfortable, setting up perfectly for the odd events to come.

My first and foremost issue with this book is the characters. I find it tragic when a novelist doesn’t pay enough attention to the inner wants, desires, and feelings, and leaves it up to the reader for interpretation. I have not won a Nobel Prize, nor been knighted, so I would like the one who has to do what he does best and write a book with fully formed characters!!! I’m sure this choice was intentional and I am not giving Ishiguro nearly enough credit, but it took away from my reading experience exponentially.

There are really three main characters in this book: Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. I won’t get too caught up on names again, but those names are just so bland. And nothing against the lovely Tommys, Kathys, and Ruths in the world, I am sure you’re wonderful - but your names just make a boring oatmeal mush in my brain when put together. Anyways!

I was trying to assign character traits to each of the characters to give a short explanation of them, i.e., Kathy the pretentious one, but I literally could not come up with a catchy little tagline for any of them. That’s how boring and unmemorable the characters came off. If I were to try to differentiate them and you were given zero context, here is what I would say: Kathy: the cold and boring one who has weird and shifting views on her friend Ruth, Ruth: the bratty, bitchy, dramatic one (you can probably tell she is my favorite), and Tommy: the bland one who used to always throw tantrums and who does weird art.

As the friends grow up, they venture past the world of Hailsham (the boarding school they all go to which I totally forgot to mention the name of), they realize that things are not as they seem. You could probably imagine this, with my mention of clones in the third line of this review. Basically, the book shifts from childhood interactions that do read as quite endearing and revealing to a colder, more depressing tone.

As the students grow up and the story progresses, their disturbing fate is revealed, and the book grows increasingly darker and less enjoyable to read.

As I am writing this review, I have come to terms with the fact that Ishiguro is an incredibly talented writer, who wrote a book that did not speak to me, and that is okay. I don’t like the way he incorporated science fiction and fantasy into this book, two things that usually turn me away from reading books pretty fast. But I can appreciate the skill and technique that Ishiguro brought to the table when writing Never Let Me Go. I just cannot get past the underdeveloped characters and the depressing tone shift that threw me off. His other book better be really darn good, because, a knighting? Really?

You can imagine that this tactic did not make dramatic teenage Poppy want to do so. To pick up a book for pleasure would be giving in to all that was evil in the world, aka my mom wanting to share her love for reading with me. So I’ll be honest, the only reason I picked up Normal People was that I had heard lots of buzz around the Hulu show. Everyone kept talking about how heartbreaking and moving the show was and how it changed their life. So, I thought the book would be somewhere as good as everyone was making this show out to be. From the second I picked up the book, I felt like I couldn’t put it down. (I did put it down many times. Usually to watch some enriching Tiktok dances or to heat my frozen Panera Mac and Cheese I got at Costco. But you get the point; I loved the book.)

Every detail of this book feels carefully placed and purposeful. Set in a dreary town in Ireland, the beginning of the book follows Marianne and Connell. Like me, they are seniors in high school, with worries that seem much grander than they are. Connell is popular and a soccer, excuse me, football player with plenty of friends. Marianne is a loner, smart, loves to read, and is constantly bullied by Connell’s aforementioned friends. Connell’s mom works as a maid for Marianne’s much more affluent family. As Connell picks his mom up from Marianne’s one day, the two share banter and chat about school. Marianne and Connell are equally sharp, which quickly distinguishes them from their peers or the “normal people” of their school. Their relationship develops, and the book follows them through the ups and many, many downs in their relationship. From the beginning, the painfully mundane exterior world of the characters compared to the complexity that goes on between Marianne and Connell behind closed doors kept me enraptured. Marianne is obsessed with the idea of normalcy, and wants to be a normal person, despite her abnormal thoughts and urges. Connell also struggles with feeling alienated, and he feels overcome by depression throughout the novel. The tangled pasts and desires of the characters creates a beautiful tension that the reader feels throughout. I also adored the way Rooney underwrites this novel in the best way possible. There is nothing I hate more than unnecessarily flowery writing. If I hear another one of my classmates write about how the greenery was lush, I will scream. But Rooney has a way of making magic happen with her short and concise sentences. She writes the novel in basic sentences, but manages to portray the characters’ innermost desires and despairs.

The story follows Gregor, a young man who supports his *ahem* lazy family who just hates to work. Because of Gregor’s capitalistic obsession with success and conformity, he is transformed into a giant insect, much to the disappointment and shock of his family. Kafka writes this book with such ease that it brings an unbothered edge of humor to Gregor and the novel which add a much-needed depth.

The novel begins with Gregor awakening in a new, giant insect form. But Gregor’s initial reaction to his metamorphosis is not of expected terror nor despair: instead, Gregor is just worried about how he will get to work this morning. The book follows along in that pattern, with the reader expecting types of typical human reactions and getting unfounded and random reactions in return. For example, when the fact of Gregor’s metamorphosis begins to settle in for the family, the father’s response is to violently hurl apples at Gregor in attempt to get him to shoo. I seriously laughed out loud during this part. I mean, your own father pelting you with apples at your darkest hour? And your darkest hour is arguably the darkest of hours: you only like to eat rotten food and you leave traces of mucus on the ceiling… Cold. And this happens again, it’s the greatest.

Towards the end of the novel, Gregor’s father again attempts to maim him with little to no explanation. And while this brings an element of humor to the novel, it also illustrates just how far gone Gregor’s soul was, even before the metamorphosis. Gregor has fallen victim to being a cog in the capitalist machine, and has let his allegiance to conformity overpower any semblance of a unique soul he may have. Throughout the novel, Gregor remains obsessed with work, his job, and providing for his family. Someone who goes to work everyday is one of a million identical people, like a cog in the machine, they are like an inconsequential bug, the story puts this metaphor into action.

Kafka mocks Gregor through his portrayal of him as a helpless, bumbling insect who still cannot escape his own capitalist virtues. Kafka continues to employ the unexpected until the end, as the audience watches a malnourished and depressed Gregor die on the floor.

If you are looking for a novel where you know that you are in good hands upon reading the first sentence, the Awakening is the book for you. Each sentence reads with such dignity and intention that I knew I was in good hands when I started reading.

The sentences hold so much weight, even if Chopin is describing something as simple as the parrot by the door. The book is set in Fair-Isle (some super-white, super-rich place in the south), at some equally rich and white cottages by the sea. In these cottages are an eclectic group of characters: Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier, Robert Lebrun, Adele Ratignolle, Mademoiselle Reisz, and Alcee Arobin. Come on, that has to be one of the best combinations of names, like, ever.

Mrs. Pontellier is our indecisive and depressed protagonist, also known as Edna. For a book written in 1898, man is she a modern woman. In the book, we find Edna at seemingly constant crossroads. She has “awakened”, but she doesn’t know what to do with it. The new Edna that is aware of her wants and desires and her place in the world, doesn’t fit with the Edna she is expected to be at home.

Edna’s awakening comes when she has an affair with the dreamy young Robert Lebrun. Total player by the way, he’s literally known for going around and flirting with (and perhaps doing more) with older, married women. But, Edna falls for his sweetness and charm, and she is never the same.

Honestly, Robert seems like a deadbeat mooching off of his rich parents and making promises he knows he’ll never keep. His big thing is talking about the fortune that awaits him in Mexico, and what does that even mean, but Edna is all like, we’ll run off together and be rich with all your riches in Mexico and we’ll never turn back!

The unintentionally funny part of this novel, to me, is Edna’s dynamic with her children. I have never heard a woman speak of their children with such an air of indifference that it’s almost shocking. Especially coming from the 1900s when women were supposed to make sandwiches and clean up their babies poop or something, I don’t even know.

But anyway, Edna is just tortured at the thought of spending her time with her children at home, and Chopin writes openly about Edna’s distaste for women who “idolize their children”. I know Chopin is trying to shift the narrative that all women are meant to sacrifice their lives for their children, but man does she write Edna as a cold, mean mother. Edna likes her children, but if they have a fever, she doesn’t really need to help them, does she? No, literally, her kids have a fever in the beginning of the book, and Edna just does not care. Wasn’t scarlet fever wiping out everyone and their sister back then? See, stone-cold.

But that’s what makes this book so fun. Chopin doesn’t revert to conventionality. Instead she does the opposite. Edna is a strong woman, but she has her flaws. As the book progresses, the reader watches Edna’s outlook on life shift, and it lowkey gets depressing. But that’s what I love about it. Not every story has to have a happy ending nor a perfect protagonist. Edna’s flaws coupled with her strength make her a wonderful heroine, and Kate Chopin is a rockstar.