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Book Review of We Need to Talk About Kevin

We Need to Talk About Kevin
candieb avatar reviewed on + 239 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 10


While I agree that someone needed to talk about (and TO HIM about, oh 15 years earlier) Kevin, I wonder if we really needed to talk about him THIS much. I found myself screaming sometimes in the beginning of this book "NO! We do NOT need to talk about Kevin! Shut up!" The first half of this book could have easily been cut by 25%. It's meandering and I only finished it because I wanted to know the ending. I hated the main characters in this book (except for the daughter). The mother's ambivalence, the father's blindness, the son's - well, everything about him. I wanted to smack that child, deck the mother and castrate the father. The book made me very angry. Can you tell?

Once you get past the first half, things really pick up - esp those last 80 pages or so. The author just spends too much time getting us there. I think part of me knew the "twist" ending, but I didn't want to know it, so I was surprised. I, honestly, am not 100% sure I'd recommend the book, HOWEVER, this would be a really really great book club book. Conversation inducing. I probably won't recommend it to my club because I don't wanna read the blasted thing again.