“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy held me captive, staying up all night immersed in its pages, awakening the next morning with a lingering sense of melancholy. Stephen King’s works, especially “The Shining,” share that unique ability to make you eagerly anticipate the next page, constantly wondering what twist awaits.
It happened to me last week.
I decided to give a chance to a book genre that I don’t usually read (romance) and I started reading Normal People by Sally Rooney.
It did not captivate me from the start. The first day I didn’t stay up longer than usual. But the second day, when I had passed the first fifty pages, I found it hard to put it down because I wanted to know what happened next.
I stayed up until pretty late that night even though I had to get up early to study before going to university.
The title intrigues me, would you say it’s not your average run of the mill romance story?
definitely not a romance but more about a shifting envolving relationship over years, and the beautiful/ugly realities of what that entails especially between two people who have a hard time connecting with others
I don’t know, really, I don’t usually read this genre. I just knew of the stereotypes surrounding this genre and the book was nothing like that.
If you don’t know about the book I recommend you check the book blurb, it will most likely do a better job than me.
I enjoyed the book overall and would recommend it to other people like me who don’t usually read romance novels. I don’t know what people who use to read this genre would think about the book, perhaps it might not be their cup of tea or perhaps it might be.
Actual romances are not like romance stereotypes when they are well-written.
But Sally Rooney is not a romance writer and people who read her books expecting them to be romances will be disappointed, it’s a much bleaker and cynical world view.
You’ve intrigued me. I kind of hate romance novels because of the tropes that get overused, but this might be up my alley. Just reserved it on Libby 🙂
If you liked the book you might want to take a look at the series, it is a great adaptation!
It took me a year before I could break through the first few chapter cause of the whole damn no quotations marks the author got going, but after I got over that, it took me only two seatings to finish the book. I wouldn’t say it was a great book. I don’t think I could even recall a huge middle part of the story, but as far as engaging writing goes, the fact that it was a page-turner is already high enough praise.
The quotation mark thingy also happened to me. At first I thought I had bought an ill formated version (I mostly read digital).
After trying to find out what had gone wrong with my book on the internet, I came across an article talking about this and that’s how I found out it was supposed to be that way.
It took me a bit aback, but after a few pages I forgot about it.
I recently read this and finished it in two days! I couldn’t put it down!