WardenRed reviewed How to Be a Normal Person by Tj Klune
None
3 stars
“I smiled,” Gus insisted. “In the mirror this morning. It was awkward and I regret it ever happened.”
TJ Klune's books are apparently very hit or miss for me. I absolutely adore The House in the Cerulean Sea. Recently, I quite enjoyed The Extraordinaries. But once upon a time, when I tried starting his Tales from Verania series, I barely got through 15% before I made the decision to DNF, the sole reason behind that decision being, "I have zero idea what I'm even reading."
How to Be a Normal Person was kind of like that, too. Except I resolutely stuck with it till the end, because I really want to read more books with ace rep. I'm not entirely sure this was a good decision.
The ace rep was one of the things that I did enjoy about this book, in all fairness. There were also some …
“I smiled,” Gus insisted. “In the mirror this morning. It was awkward and I regret it ever happened.”
TJ Klune's books are apparently very hit or miss for me. I absolutely adore The House in the Cerulean Sea. Recently, I quite enjoyed The Extraordinaries. But once upon a time, when I tried starting his Tales from Verania series, I barely got through 15% before I made the decision to DNF, the sole reason behind that decision being, "I have zero idea what I'm even reading."
How to Be a Normal Person was kind of like that, too. Except I resolutely stuck with it till the end, because I really want to read more books with ace rep. I'm not entirely sure this was a good decision.
The ace rep was one of the things that I did enjoy about this book, in all fairness. There were also some cute moments that made me smile. Some interesting characters. Some nice found family vibes. A ferret that deserved more screen time, in my humble ferret-loving opinion. Really, there were a lot of pieces that, individually, looked like they should make this book very much my kind of read. But they just never fit into a coherent picture. Reading this book was, in fact, like walking around a messy room with plenty of puzzle pieces thrown around in piles, with confetti on top and someone smoking pot in the corner. Colorful, bizarre, funny at times... But not quite the experience I'm looking for, I guess?
In other words, there was a lot of funny dialogue that didn't always move the plot along, the narrative lacked coherence, and an hour after finishing the book, all I can tell you about the plot is, "It's a romance; one of them is grumpy and wants to be a normal person for some reason, the other is an asexual hipster who's sometimes stoned; and there are some quotes from presumably made-up self-help articles that are presumably used as a framing device."
You know what, forget the metaphor about the messy room. This book reminded me of what's usually going on in my own head somewhere between midnight and 3 AM. I read books to get out of my head and to guide the chaotic mess in my brain into some semblance of order. So the book and I, we just didn't click. But I know a lot of people like it, and I hope it keeps finding its readers!
