Review of 'Black heart on the Appalachian trail' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
This was a difficult one to review, but unfortunately I think the negatives outweighed the positives on this one for me. Still, it's a short enough book that I was able to finish in one sitting without feeling like I was robbed of my time.
Honestly the most interesting thing about this book is its structure; there is a main character that we follow in first-person narration, but every other chapter cuts away to introduce a new character in a concurrent but separate vignette told in third person. Sometimes these side characters appear in each others' chapters or in the main character's chapters, but not always. Can't think of another book I've read that did that.
The central theme of the book could be described in the simple question, "can people change who they are?", and it was successfully reinforced throughout. The answer I took away from the ending was …
This was a difficult one to review, but unfortunately I think the negatives outweighed the positives on this one for me. Still, it's a short enough book that I was able to finish in one sitting without feeling like I was robbed of my time.
Honestly the most interesting thing about this book is its structure; there is a main character that we follow in first-person narration, but every other chapter cuts away to introduce a new character in a concurrent but separate vignette told in third person. Sometimes these side characters appear in each others' chapters or in the main character's chapters, but not always. Can't think of another book I've read that did that.
The central theme of the book could be described in the simple question, "can people change who they are?", and it was successfully reinforced throughout. The answer I took away from the ending was "some can, some can't." Whether or not a reader will agree with that is entirely subjective, but I appreciate that it came to a concise conclusion rather than ending with some wishy-washy ending that was up to the reader's interpretation.
And while I appreciated the ending, I was less enthused about the journey up to that point. The synopsis on the back cover sort of led me to expect a mystery/thriller/horror story, which this book decidedly is not. There are a lot of sex scenes that feel largely unnecessary, multiple unhappy couples, and just a lot of unlikable characters (and I don't know how much of that was by design on the author's part). I liked the premise and setting of this story, I just wished it had leaned more into the mystery aspects and maybe trimmed out some of the more tangential vignettes.