reading journal

the story is centered on the obsessive friendship formed between two teenage boys, paul and julian. having just finished the second part of the book (which lies just shy of the halfway point), i can say that while i have no set predictions on how the events will unfold, i am sure that it will end poorly for both young men. the violence that draws paul in and subsequently arouses julian will be their downfall in one way, shape, or form.

i finished fangirl yesterday and am about 100 pages into carry on. side note: i forgot how long it took for baz to show up. don’t get me wrong; i love simon, but 100 pages of him obsessing over baz and what he may or may not be up too is a bit excessive. i have no idea how cath and the rest of the gemma t leslie simon snow fans put up with it.

reading carry on, knowing there are two more books to look forward to and seeing things i’d overlooked, not realizing how important they would become, has been really exciting.

for example, i always tear up when wren mocks cath for her simon and baz obsession. i always close the book when cath shows up at levi’s party and she and reagan see him kissing the nameless girls. my stomach clenches when cath tell’s levi why she’s mad at him and that it’s never “just a kiss” for her.

so, on the subject of ambiguous endings, i have to talk about ‘the miseducation of cameron post’. danforth leaving off where she did, after saying goodbye to her parents and embracing her friends, was perfect. i like not knowing how the great escape ends. i think it was the best way to end such an incredible book.

that being said, i don’t think it would’ve worked as adult fiction because of how juvenile the writing style felt at times. it was jarring and there were several occasions where i simply put down the book or read lines aloud, incredulous at how they made it past an editor.

the antagonists felt like caricatures of antagonists. scotty, jonathon’s former best friend and primary tormentor being gay was no surprise, because the secretly gay bully has been done a million and one times.

my major critique of all the light we cannot see has to be jutta’s rape. it felt so out of place and vile. going from werner’s death, the shock and quickness of it, to frau elena, jutta, and the other orphan girls getting assaulted by the invading russians was jarring and left a bad taste in my mouth. 

every other time we left marie-laure and warner, the reader was given information that added to the plot in some way. whether it be telling the reader about von rumpel or the arrests of marie-laure’s papa and great-uncle. the rape however offered nothing off the sort.

-i don’t know when our protagonists will meet, from the 1944 viewpoints we’ve gotten i don’t think they’ve interacted

-frederick is undoubtedly my favorite character, i absolutely adore him. i worry that something will happen to him, something worse than the horrible treatment he’s been subject to since refusing to torture the prisoner with the other boys

-i believe that madame manec and her resistance club will be found out and that is the reason for her absence in the 1944 chapters

-the diamond has ended up playing a much larger part than i had originally anticipated and i cant say i mind, especially because von rumpel’s pov has been especially captivating.