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A review by smokedshelves
Nightbirds by Kate J. Armstrong
2.0
thank you to penguin teen and nancy paulsen books for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
i’m writing this opening part about 60% into the book. i can for almost certain tell you i’m going to forget anything about this book in about 3 days.
y’all, there are so many perspectives, all muddled together. they’re not all that particularly different in voice. nor do we know who’s the character we’re following from any written indication. it makes my brain swim to catch up, and then we often move onto the next perspective by then… i genuinely would like to know the reason for writing it like this. and besides giving each of the many characters one (1) personality trait that they grab on for dear life, i genuinely wouldn’t have been able to discern who’s who. (and honestly i didn’t i swear like five characters popped up in the middle of the story and apparently we knew them???)
besides that absolute mess of a style choice, the actual pace and lack of commentary in this book says it all. it feels to me like the author had a unique concept and setting and then just threw everything at the wall. she included all these perspectives that were completely unnecessary, and the goal of the story itself got convoluted in the middle. to me, it really seems like a few more passes should’ve been made to trim the story down from nearly 500 pages. there was no reason for this story to have taken us that long, and i personally feel like it accomplished nothing. to say, finishing the book was my favorite part would be an unfortunate truth. it just was not at all as well constructed as i was hoping.