Normal People

maaaaaybe 2.5

I really thought i'd like it a lot more but it was a chore to finish honestly. rooney's writing, while it added to the plot in conversations with friends, here it does nothing. and definitely not enough to make the book enjoyable. In fact, I think it made it less enjoyable.

for a character driven story, the characters lacked personality. They were very bland and static. They felt very “fake”, which made me feel very distant from them. I struggled to connect with them emotionally.

The inner conflicts that they're supposedly struggling with came across as whiny sometimes.

Things like eating disorders and domestic abuse were kind of just thrown in there and not well explored, or rather were not handled properly.

The ending was really abrupt and came out of nowhere.