I appreciate the premiseā¦ kids are cloned for the sole purpose of donating their organs for naturally born humans, and we follow their journey from school to death. I suppose the kidsā origin and purpose is supposed to be a huge twist to the novel, but I had already watched the movie years ago (which I also didnāt enjoy), and while I was reading, I wasnāt enjoying it enough to be impressed by the narrative twist at all.
ā¦but everything annoyed meā¦ though I know itās a book lauded as one of the best of this century. I really didnāt enjoy the narrative structure and the way Kathy kept going back and forth chronologically. She constantly said things like ā…but Iāll come back to thatā¦ā or āIāll have to go back a bit, to give you the background.ā And it was an intense stream of consciousness, which isnāt always a turn off for me, but I have to enjoy being in the narratorās mind. Kathy just seemed like an annoyingly scatter-brained narrator, and I suppose thatās realistic, but it didnāt lend itself to an enjoyable reading experience. Practically every paragraph started with āAnyway, to get back to my pointā¦ā, āNow that I think about itā¦ā, āIt was, as I sayā¦ā, or āLooking back nowā¦.ā It drove me crazy.
All of the characters were beyond unlikeable and bland. They all looked down on Ruth despite revolving around her and despite all of them having the same flaws: whiny, fake, and selfish. Ruth was just a tad more adaptable and more of a people pleaser. I felt like the author was shoving down my throat that Ruth was supposed to be the villain, and isnāt Kathy such an angel for even tolerating her and wanting to be her friend.
The end was also disappointing and awful. All the explanations the kids were pining for were just dumped into a melodramatic and drawn out conversation, and part of it was the golden nugget of where the title āNever Let Me Goā was derived, which was the most nauseating part that simply felt incredibly contrived.
ā¦so itās joined my least favorite books pile.
