Elizabeth Acevedo: Clap When You Land (2020, HarperCollins Publishers)
432 pages
English language
Published Oct. 30, 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers.
I'm glad I listened to this as an audiobook because the reading of it was lyrical, almost like a poem.
First time listening to a novel in verse on audio and the narration was a bit hit and miss. Some of it was excellent but then the sections that were more like prose were just like someone reading prose with odd pauses and inflections.
I liked the story well enough and will probably stick to to reading the text for her other books.
I have loved this author's previous two books. I was so excited to get to listen to this one as well. However, I didn't really enjoy this book. I think this is an issue of having wrong expectations of what the book was going to be about. Reading that description, I expected to hear a story about two sisters who find out that they share a father. I was interested in that. Instead this book is a study of grief from several different viewpoints. It does that very well but because that wasn't the story that I thought I was signing up for I was frustrated through most of the book. I just wanted them to get to the point where the girls meet each other. That doesn't happen until about 3/4 of the way through. The father in this story was just a horrible person as you find out …
I have loved this author's previous two books. I was so excited to get to listen to this one as well. However, I didn't really enjoy this book. I think this is an issue of having wrong expectations of what the book was going to be about. Reading that description, I expected to hear a story about two sisters who find out that they share a father. I was interested in that. Instead this book is a study of grief from several different viewpoints. It does that very well but because that wasn't the story that I thought I was signing up for I was frustrated through most of the book. I just wanted them to get to the point where the girls meet each other. That doesn't happen until about 3/4 of the way through. The father in this story was just a horrible person as you find out the facts about his life. It was hard for me to care about their grief for this man when he had been not good to the women around him. There was also a subplot about a man trying to prey on Camino now that her father was dead that I'm sure was realistic but it was quite disturbing. It added to the whole "women are forever being victimized by men and they have to just take it" feeling that the story had. I just was not in the mood for it. So, great writing as expected from this author but it wasn't for me. I think if you know what the book is really about, you might enjoy it more when you are in the mood for something deep and sad. This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story
