I was recently asked what sort of books I like to read. My answer? What other people recommend.
I read all the time, and I read a huge variety of things from a variety of time periods and authors. But my favorite books are always recommendations from others. Especially since I have a weird obsession with finishing every book I start – even if I’m not enjoying it – reading things that those I know and love can vouch for tends to be a phenomenal way to keep from wasting time on something I don’t like.
It was thanks to this that I stumbled upon a genre I never would have picked up: horror. I don’t like being scared, and I scare easily, so horror is usually at the bottom of my list. But after a few recommendations of this YA work (which, full disclosure, was repped by the agent with whom I worked previously), I decided to delve in.
The story charts the experience of three girls at a boarding school in Maine that has been quarantined following the outbreak of a mysterious illness. I’ll admit, it took me a while to get into the story, in large part because from the very beginning, I had a difficult time telling the characters apart. By the end of the book, it seems impossible that it would have taken me so long to distinguish Hetty and Byatt (our two narrators) from one another and from Reese, but the fact remains, and this distraction kept me from sinking too far in for a number of pages.
Even when I couldn’t tell the characters apart, I was captivated by the description in this book – grotesque and visceral and beautiful. It was this that led me through and past the other problems I found with the story: the fact that the relationships always felt so tenuous, the fact that the conclusion to the story felt at once too quick and too unresolved, the fact that I felt, as I was reading, that I was being kept on the outside of a bubble I desperately wanted to break into.
This is a beautiful book, and many people other than I have found the story far more satisfying than I did. For now, I’ll say that I’m glad it exists, and I found it a wholly enjoyable – and surprising – read.