Book reviews: Allt jag inte minns | Scarlet | Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Title: Allt jag inte minns (Everything I Don't Remember)
Author: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Original title: Allt jag inte minns
Genre: Contemporary, mystery
Series: --
Publisher: Albert Bonniers Förlag
Format: Paperback
Pages: 334
Finished: 27/10/2017

Summary: A young man named Samuel dies in a car crash. Accident or suicide? An unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to piece together Samuel's story. Through conversations with friends, relatives and neighbours, a portrait of Samuel emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the loyal friend, the contrived poser. The young man who would do anything for his girlfriend Laide and share everything with his friend Vandad. Until he loses touch with them both.

My thoughts: Having read and pretty much despised Khemiri's other novel "Ett öga rött" ("An eye red", with the bad grammar intended), I can tell you that I was not thrilled when my literature teacher announced that we'd be reading yet another book by him. With the last Khemiri novel scarring me and my classmates for life with how much we disliked it, none of us wanted to get into another of his books. So to say the least, this whole journey didn't start out great.
Did it turn around? Actually, and luckily for my literature teacher, if she wishes for her students to like her, "Allt jag inte minns" was a whole different book than "Ett öga rött". The language wasn't stilted with that intentionally incorrect grammar, the characters were easier to understand and relate to, and the story itself had a better buildup with a distorted timeline, which I liked a lot. I've seen the same sort of jumping back and forth for every new chapter in a book in my favourite novel, "Vicious" by V.E. Schwab, so it was a plus for me. However, what exactly was it that made me enjoy this novel? Well, first of all, we see the story from the point of view of a character that we never really get to know. They are an author, who has decided to dedicate themselves to the mystery of the death of a young man by the name Samuel. It takes place in Sweden, and we follow this writer and he interviews the different people who played major or minor roles in Samuel's life. There's Vandad, who became close friends with Samuel, and Laide, who ended up in a turbulent and deep relationship with Samuel. The way we learn about Samuel and his faith is through the interviews. As the characters speak, we find out things not only about Samuel, but also about their relationships to each other and what each and every character has gone through. It's a very unique and gripping way of telling a story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
On the other hand, the language wasn't the best I've seen. I guess it worked pretty well for a contemporary mystery novel like this, with the focus being on the story rather than a poetic and beautiful writing style, but it pushes the rating down a bit for me. Overall, this novel gave me an exciting little journey into these characters' world, and I have found some new respect for Jonas Hassen Khemiri (*cough* and maybe my literature teacher too). Considering my expectations, I'd say they were far succeeded.

Rating: 4/5

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Title: Scarlet
Author: Marissa Meyer
Original title: Scarlet
Genre: Sci-fi
Series: The Lunar Chronicles #2
Publisher: Puffin Books
Format: Paperback
Pages: 452
Finished: 08/01/2018

Summary: Spoiler alert! Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother is missing. The police have closed her case. The only person Scarlet can turn to is Wolf, a street fighter she does not trust, but they are drawn to each other.
Meanwhile, in New Beijing, Cinder will become the Commonwealth’s most wanted fugitive – when she breaks out of prison to stay one step ahead of vicious Queen Levana.

My thoughts: So this was the second book that we finished in the little book club that my friends Matilda, Emmy, Karin and I (yes, I am my own friend, shaddup) participated in this time. After loving the first book in the series, "Cinder", we were kind of in a rush to dig into the sequel of this action packed sci-fi YA adventure of a series. I was so excited to continue following Cinder's journey and to meet some new characters. While Cinder continued to deliver goodness, well... the others did not.
I'm not going to spoil too much of this novel for you, but let's just say, and this is predictable anyways and we all knew it was going to happen whether you've read the book or not, there's a certain relationship that develops in this instalment of the series and I did NOT like it. Okay, you don't agree? Well, allow me to explain.
WTF was that relationship development? Like, seriously??! Even if I did ship the characters, the way that was done was just so unrealistic and cringey and unprofessionally done by the author that I honestly had a really hard time getting through that last 25% of the novel. For real, Meyer? Really? Okay, I'm not gonna go too hard on her, but really, that whole thing just blew the book for me. Completely blew it. Nu-huh, I ain't taking that. Ish.
Other than that it was pretty cool, I guess. All I remember when I think about the book now, though, is that one relationship development. Nope. Doesn't work. Down goes the rating. Hoping for better writing in the next books in the series, if I get around to reading those...
Bleh.

Rating: 3/5

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Title: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Original title: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Genre: Contemporary, YA
Series: --
Publisher: Simon Schuster Books
Format: Paperback
Pages: 359
Finished: 16/02/2018

Summary: Dante can swim. Ari can't. Dante is articulate and self-assured. Ari has a hard time with words and suffers from self-doubt. Dante gets lost in poetry and art. Ari gets lost in thoughts of his older brother who is in prison. Dante is fair skinned. Ari's features are much darker. It seems that a boy like Dante, with his open and unique perspective on life, would be the last person to break down the walls that Ari has built around himself.

My thoughts: Okay, so... let's take a moment here, where I want to warn all of you out there who have read this book and liked it. If you loved it, liked it, or hold it close to your heart, beware of this review. I don't mean to upset you or start an argument. I know a lot of people adore this novel. I didn't. Now you know. Continue at your own risk.
Here's a quick list of things that I liked about the book:

• The length of the chapters (Very short, sometimes just half a page)
• Dante and his parents (Dante in particular I found to be the most, and maybe really the only, likeable character in the book)
• The dog (Always love the doggos)
• The cover (I am weak for nice covers)

Here's a slightly longer list of things that I didn't like:

• The plot (Didn't really follow the typical dramatic structure, which is fine, but it didn't turn out well)
• The majority of the characters (Which, despite the length of the novel, remained a bit stilted, shallow and unrealistic all the way through)
• The writing style (Will get in on that further down)
• The romance (Yeah, no...)
• The ending (Abrupt)
• The pace of the plot (Too hasty in areas that maybe should've been dragged out more)
• The dialogues (Stilted and unrealistic)

There we go. That's an overall view of what I liked and didn't like. I might add that I read this book out loud to my lovely girlfriend Camilla, who didn't like it either. So, moving on, here's a more elaborate summary of my thoughts.

This novel has gotten a huge amount of hype. I've been wanting to read it for years, but didn't pick it up until two close friends of my read it and started raving about how good it was. I immediately bought it and soon dug in. Regarding everything that I have to say about the plot, I was disappointed to find that some parts that seemed important, for example the beginning of Ari's and Dante's relationship, was rushed and almost skipped over, which made me feel distanced from their relationship from the start. I also didn't like the fact that the plot didn't follow the typical dramatic structure, which obviously is a conscious choice of the author and in some cases they can make it work, but it didn't with this book. What it resulted in was me, as a reader, feeling bored and unexcited for what would happen next or for the ending/climax and resolution. Sadly, that was something the book would have needed for a lift in rating in my eyes. Moreover, the ending itself seemed abrupt and forced. It kind of came out of nowhere. I won't spoil what happened, but what did happen seemed unlikely and it would probably was been best if the turnout had been different. On another note, that leads us to my opinion of the characters. We follow Ari through the book. Although we get to know him pretty well, I never developed any care for him or even a slight liking. To me, there wasn't much of his personality that I could really connect to, and to be honest I didn't feel like he had any depth, despite him being the main character. The character with most depth and likeable personality in the book was probably Dante and Ari's father. I feel like the author was trying too hard overall. The language was a poor attempt at being poetic, which resulted in slightly pathetic quotes all over in the book. Sure, some were good, but the majority was kind of... cheap. Like the author had a jar of pieces of paper, and he pulled out a handful and improvised a bad philosophical quote out of it. The sentences were short and awkward and not at all pleasant to read out loud. Sometimes it's a nice trick to end or start several sentences close together with the same beginning or end. I don't know if the way the author wrote was an attempt at this, but it was awful. He, for example, ended several following sentences with one word, like "again", and though it might not seem like such a mad thing when you imagine it, trust me, it is. The dialogues, too, were stilted, awkward, unrealistic and confusing. There were dialogues that were just speaking lines for almost a page without anything showing who was talking. I had to keep count of the lines in order to know who spoke, and even then he sometimes put two lines in a row where the same character was speaking. Some directions would have been nice.

So who would enjoy this book? This is the roasting part, btw. Look away, fans of this novel. Okay, here we go. I'd recommend this book to people who don't actually know what a good poetic language is, but who really try to pretend like they do. I'd also recommend it to those who want an LGBTQ+ YA contemporary novel that is classified as LGBTQ+ but which doesn't feature that a lot, even though it's a main part of the book's premise. If you enjoy novels with flat plot lines and failed attempts at deep characters, this is the book for you. Also, it has short chapters! Half of them could have been left out. That's it!

Please don't punch me for this <3

Rating: 2/5