deepfriedgoogs's reviews
513 reviews

What is with all the fucking mentions and focus on feet?? I counted: feet are mentioned 13 times throughout the book. The Witch's feet are always described as gross and nasty. There is a lovingly described foot washing scene. Also the book's plot and writing are trite and facile and tired, and everything is so overexplained, but like I can't get over the foot thing. Thirteen times??

glurge

Normally, I'm Mr. Let Some of Your Story Elements Remain Mysterious and Unanswered Because That Shit Rules. I did really like how Ruth never definitively found out about Nao in the present moment and that she writes that letter to that undetermined future in the same way Nao addressed the Schrodinger's diary reader.

But one crucial element to making that stuff click wasn't there for me: I just straight up didn't like the Ruth chapters. Ruth and her husband weren't likable in any fashion to me. 

Nao's chapters were the highlight of the book: the delicious meat and potatoes to Ruth's carrots boiled in vinegar for an hour.

How the author managed to make me like a teenager who basically went up to her suicidal dad and handed him a note that basically said 'get less worse at killing yourself' better than a random woman is quite something.

(As an aside DON'T RANDOMLY PLANT BAMBOO IN THE GROUND LIKE THE HUSBAND DID JESUS CHRIST. it has the potential to be highly invasive. love, someone whose fool neighbours planted it in the ground and now we have bamboo choking out our native plants 😒)

I like this book quite a lot more than the first - I think the issue of the plot being so floaty and having no real stakes is greatly lessened. It might just be the fact that we know the main character has to leave and do the events of the first book, but I felt more invested this go around. I also believe the main plot was done better than the first book's.