THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU was a so-so attempt at expressing the significance of a particular period in life for three friends. What it fails to do in terms of catching one's attention, it makes up for in the blunt and often brutal writing style.
The most striking part of this book is the style in which it was written. It's rather simple and blunt, and therefore evokes pain, secrets, and other appropriately dark qualities. The way it was written reminded me of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, with both of their abilities to convey difficult, gut-wrenching yet quietly overpowering feelings of adolescent loneliness.
That being said, the writing style was also what I liked least. It just seemed like too much at too many points in the story. From the very beginning of Nadio and Noelle's narrations we get the sense that something monumental, something life-changing, has occurred to the three main characters--and yet the book never follows through on this potential. Instead, it wallows in the same feelings of teen-angst direness for most of the novel. These characters never get a break from their misery, and thus we readers don't either, which can be immensely overwhelming and unsatisfying.
THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU is a difficult but potentially rewarding read. If you like your teen angst novels dark and mired in shoals of hopelessness, this could be for you.
The most striking part of this book is the style in which it was written. It's rather simple and blunt, and therefore evokes pain, secrets, and other appropriately dark qualities. The way it was written reminded me of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, with both of their abilities to convey difficult, gut-wrenching yet quietly overpowering feelings of adolescent loneliness.
That being said, the writing style was also what I liked least. It just seemed like too much at too many points in the story. From the very beginning of Nadio and Noelle's narrations we get the sense that something monumental, something life-changing, has occurred to the three main characters--and yet the book never follows through on this potential. Instead, it wallows in the same feelings of teen-angst direness for most of the novel. These characters never get a break from their misery, and thus we readers don't either, which can be immensely overwhelming and unsatisfying.
THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO TELL YOU is a difficult but potentially rewarding read. If you like your teen angst novels dark and mired in shoals of hopelessness, this could be for you.
