What I Read: Book Lovers

It's time to give fiction another go! And bonus, it seems that everyone on the internet loves this book. 

I, however, am not one of those people who loved this book. I don't mean this as a critique of the book, but that I am still working to find my lane of fiction. A fiction that I can enjoy, feel challenged by, and relate to in some way. This one, however, fell flat in all three of those for me. 

The plot felt predictable and salacious, but not emotionally so. The dialogue was pigeonholed and the characters lacked depth. The depth that was intended for the main character was actually just her ending up being opposite of what she believed herself to be. Real people, all of us, are a different kind of complex, right? We don't realize, either suddenly or over time, that all of our tropes point to an alternative but "real" version of us. Our complexities blossom and recede over time. It's not that we switch from one reality to another. We are swimming in a multitude of possibilities. Life decisions that swing us one direction or another only serve to highlight and develop different parts of ourselves that we've previously hidden for a different version of us that was previously needed. None of this is good or bad, but it is all why I struggled with this book.

My goal in reading this book was to dip into a novel that much of popular culture was also in at the moment. I can't say it was the most enriching approach, but an approach worth trying. Moving forward, I will probably stick with critically acclaimed fiction that I'm 5 or so years late in reading.