#reveiws

The twist singlehandedly ruins this movie. Slashers, especially those of the 80s or so, are infamously sexual in nature from its characters to at times its killers-and with another Valentine's themed one to join Harry Warden and Cupid and probably some others, there was a lot of potential to be had.

Instead, we get the reveal that Heart Eyes is a couple whos 'kink' is killing couples. They act like characters you'd find in any Booktok 'dark romance', except the movie cannot even commit to truly touching sexually violent characters or actions (not in the sense of s/a, but rather in killing in sexual You get it). Closest we get is the carousel scene, but even then that's brief and ultimately inconsequential. It's a idea that could have been explored-such as in What in particular they like about doing it, commentary on a romance-obsessed society (and some was attempted by making the protag leads fall in love completely contradicts this commentary), but instead they just giggle over who killed who.

The fact that the Heart Eyes that was killed in the middle of the movie was a 'obsessed fan' is glazed over and inconsequential, and if anything was a move performed to give this twist 'room'. Hell, if they had to do the Freaky Couple route, killing one of them half through might have made this twist more interesting.

On the leads falling in love. It undercuts the whole movie and it feels incredibly forced.

There's plenty of routes that could have been taken with a character like Heart Eyes. They have quite a nice design, and what kills we do get with them are fantastic, if at times uncreative. It's the lack of a clear identity and the poor writing of the people behind the mask that really kill them.

This book was put on my “To Read” shelf on Goodreads in the year 2015. I would stare at it if I saw it at the bookstore and contemplate buying it almost every time, but for some reason I never did.  It might have been because the cover art didn’t really appeal to me but I really could not tell you why I never bought. Whatever the reason it was a mistake to wait, but better late than never, I guess.  The reason I finally ended up buying and reading it is because the movie adaptation is being released next year, and even though I’m usually disappointed by books turned into movies (don’t get me wrong there are absolutely some good ones out there), I will 110% go see it because Tom Holland is playing Todd Hewitt.  That’s it.  That’s the reason I finally bought The Knife of Never Letting Go.

Let me start this off by saying, if words that are spelled wrong REALLY bother you, this book might not be for you.  The story is told from Todd’s perspective, and the writing/spelling reflects the fact that he was brought up in a town with very little education.  ‘Through’ is spelled ‘thru’, ‘creature’ is spelled ‘creacher’, ‘motion’ is spelled ‘moshun’, you get my point.  It only took me a few pages to get used to it, and I kind of enjoyed it after awhile.  It made the story a little more real in my head since I read it the way it was supposed to be spoken.  It was a nice change from the usual “they had *insert whatever you want* accent” now use your imagination to create it.  

The other thing to mention about the writing of the book, is that the Noise is shown in different font depending on who or what is talking.  There is a page in the first chapter, where Todd is returning to town from wandering the swamp, and it’s just an entire page of words on top of words in different aggressive fonts.  For me, it painted a pretty good picture of the overload of information you would get if you could hear everyone’s thoughts.

Now that I’ve gotten my warning about spelling out of the way, I’d like to talk about the characters.  First and foremost, Todd Hewitt.  To put it simply, I liked Todd.  His character is innately good and always wants to do the right thing, and when he doesn’t, he feels guilty about it and he suffers for it. Usually the goody-goody characters are not for me. Nine times out of ten they annoy me because NO-ONE, real or fictional is perfect or completely good. And while you can tell the purpose of Todd’s character is to be good and be a sort of beacon of hope, he still makes mistakes, BIG MISTAKES, and he never makes excuses for them.

Our next important character, is “The Girl”.  I’m not going to ruin her name or who she is because you learn that as the story goes on, but of course I loved her because she was strong and smart.  When we first meet her she’s scared and in shock, but as the book goes on, this girl saves Todd more times than I could count.  She’s resourceful and does the best she possibly can in a new and completely unknown situation. 

Todd and our Girl meet plenty of other people as they’re racing through the forest following a river that they hope will lead them somewhere safe.  It’s fairly simple to tell who will be ‘good’ and who will be ‘bad’ as you meet the different characters, but you never know what they’re going to do or if the actions of Todd and those chasing them are going to change them.

The other thing I want to touch on is romance.  Not going to lie, I totally expected Todd and the Girl to fall in love almost immediately because in most YA books, that’s how it goes.  I could not have been more wrong.  The story is so realistic in the sense that they’re too busy running for their lives to worry about having feelings for each other.  It’s also realistic in the way that it takes a while for them to fully trust each other.  Todd is extra apprehensive since he can’t hear what she’s thinking all the time. Was I hoping there was some romance? Maybe, just a little.  Would I want it to be changed at all in real life? Nope, no thanks. 

The only negative thing I might be able to say about this book is that it could have been a little shorter.  The book was 512 pages, which isn’t the longest book I’ve ever read, but I don’t think it was absolutely necessary for it to be that long.  I was never bored while reading this book.  Let me repeat that, I WAS NEVER BORED WHILE READING THIS BOOK.  However, there were parts where I was thinking to myself “I just read so much and I feel like nothing happened”. All that being said, the pages flew by and I finished the majority of the book in a day.

Overall, The Knife of Never Letting Go was a good Sci-Fi/Dystopian/Fantasy read and I would totally recommend it.  Just make sure you decide to do it when you have time for a lot of reading because the second and third books are just as big and you’re probably going to want to start them immediately.