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A review by leafblade
Above All Else by Dana Alison Levy
4.0
I recieved an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I truly don't know where to start with this one. I guess by saying that sometimes I review books and I'm like "oh, I wish it had focused more on the relationships between the characters/character development/the actual plot/the setting" but I can't say any of this with this one because it had it all in the perfect measure. MAYBE I would've spent either a bit more or a bit less of page-time on the romance because it seemed weird at times, but it played such a little bit of a part in the story that I ended up not caring about how it made me feel. The relationship between Rose and Tate is one of the pillars of the book, but not so much because they like each other or because they slept together, but because they're RoseAndTate, a kind of two-headed being that's always been attached to the hip but that now it's divided, because both of them want different things out of Mt. Everest.
The book also spents some time reflecting upon the colonialism of it all. Like, how Everest is a white name because it was a sacred mountain that no one dared to climb but a white guy got to the top of it and suddenly it was named after him. How the MC chooses a climbing group lead by natives because she feels that's what's best, but it isn't, really. How it's selfish to want to climb Everest knowing it has so much meaning to the Nepali (is that the word??) people living around it, and how she wants to climb it anyway, leaving room for criticism for her. Because the author never tries to hide the fact that this is a pretty fucked-up, colonialist, racist thing to do, even if the lines are blurry in some places.
On a personal note, I tend to not get attached to characters in standalones. I think what matters most when you have only one single book to tell your story is just that: telling the story, getting the message across. It's not very often that I come across characters that feel three-dimensional, complicated, human. But this book managed that, and I can't pinpoint how. I mean, there was conflict and there was an experience that brought some of them together and drove some of them apart, but that's a thing that many standalones have and yet they don't quite reach the level of depth that this book has. I guess that's one of those things that you have to give kudos to the author for.
The climbing-actual-Mt. Everest part starts around the 50% mark, and that was PERFECT timing. Maybe you haven't read this book yet and you're like "I came here to read about Everest, why do I have to wait 150+ pages to see them set foot on it??" but believe me: it makes sense. The prep work and flashbacks and character development that takes part in the first half of the book is crucial to everything that comes after it. And you wouldn't root for them as hard as you do while they're on the mountain if you didn't have that.
(Also Tate's decision??? Iconic)
I truly don't know where to start with this one. I guess by saying that sometimes I review books and I'm like "oh, I wish it had focused more on the relationships between the characters/character development/the actual plot/the setting" but I can't say any of this with this one because it had it all in the perfect measure. MAYBE I would've spent either a bit more or a bit less of page-time on the romance because it seemed weird at times, but it played such a little bit of a part in the story that I ended up not caring about how it made me feel. The relationship between Rose and Tate is one of the pillars of the book, but not so much because they like each other or because they slept together, but because they're RoseAndTate, a kind of two-headed being that's always been attached to the hip but that now it's divided, because both of them want different things out of Mt. Everest.
The book also spents some time reflecting upon the colonialism of it all. Like, how Everest is a white name because it was a sacred mountain that no one dared to climb but a white guy got to the top of it and suddenly it was named after him. How the MC chooses a climbing group lead by natives because she feels that's what's best, but it isn't, really. How it's selfish to want to climb Everest knowing it has so much meaning to the Nepali (is that the word??) people living around it, and how she wants to climb it anyway, leaving room for criticism for her. Because the author never tries to hide the fact that this is a pretty fucked-up, colonialist, racist thing to do, even if the lines are blurry in some places.
On a personal note, I tend to not get attached to characters in standalones. I think what matters most when you have only one single book to tell your story is just that: telling the story, getting the message across. It's not very often that I come across characters that feel three-dimensional, complicated, human. But this book managed that, and I can't pinpoint how. I mean, there was conflict and there was an experience that brought some of them together and drove some of them apart, but that's a thing that many standalones have and yet they don't quite reach the level of depth that this book has. I guess that's one of those things that you have to give kudos to the author for.
The climbing-actual-Mt. Everest part starts around the 50% mark, and that was PERFECT timing. Maybe you haven't read this book yet and you're like "I came here to read about Everest, why do I have to wait 150+ pages to see them set foot on it??" but believe me: it makes sense. The prep work and flashbacks and character development that takes part in the first half of the book is crucial to everything that comes after it. And you wouldn't root for them as hard as you do while they're on the mountain if you didn't have that.
(Also Tate's decision??? Iconic)