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Melinda Ott
, January 16, 2015
(view all comments by Melinda Ott)
Warning: We are about to entire "unpopular opinion territory."
Nearly everyone I know--either in real life or in the book blogosphere--loved this book. I....did not hate it. Really, I liked it...I just didn't love it enough to jump on the bandwagon.
This is, in many respects, an interesting book. Moyes has taken a hot-button social topic and has centered a love story around it. I try to stay away from spoilers, but I can't really review this book without talking about that topic....
(I'm not really sure this is a spoiler as it is strongly hinted at in the summary, but I'm giving you space to back out now....)
Death with Dignity or Physician-Assisted Suicide is not a comfortable topic but Moyes tackles it head on. While I believe she did the best she could within the confines of the genre of this book, I really felt that she needed to go deeper . It is not that I'm personally offended by the topic--although I can see how some readers might be--but I do think that it is a serious enough topic that it needs it due. Moyes scratches the surface of things--Will's mother doesn't want him to do it, but she loves him; Lou doesn't want him to do it and thinks life can be better than he thinks; a random dude in a chat room totally gets why Will wants to do it. But, other than Will stating, when his mind is made up, why he wants to do it, we really don't get any of his struggle in the decision. I really felt that this aspect of the story needed, well, more.
I also felt that Lou was not a fully developed character. The Lou at the end of the novel was not much different from the Lou at the beginning of the novel and what few changes did happen were made to or for her and not by her. I really felt that there should have been more growth in her character after everything that happened in this book.
I also had some problems with the structure of this book. There are a few chapters that are told through the eyes of some secondary characters (Will's medical caregiver, his mother, his father, and Lou's sisters). I thought this was a nice touch, but I found it odd that these didn't appear until about two-thirds of the way through the book. At that point, it became jarring to suddenly switch viewpoints. If Moyes had scattered these more evenly through the book, I think they would have been more effective.
Also, I will admit that I cried at the end of the book--which isn't really that notable since I cry at pretty much everything. However, the ending was not the emotional climax for me. Instead, that came a few chapters earlier in a section from Lou's sister's point of view. That chapter was incredibly well written and may have had the truest emotion in the book--which is both great and not so great. You see, the ending of the book should have surpassed that and it just didn't, which left me feeling a little disappointed, which is what I carry from the book,
It wasn't horrible--I like Moyes writing and am looking forward to reading more by her. I applaud her for taking on such a subject, even if I felt she wasn't completely successful in doing so. And she made me cry which, while not a difficult feat, is still something I appreciate in a book.
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