The Kindness
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Reviews
This was Woodlands Pop-Up Book Club's first ever read. There was plenty to discuss, making it a good choice for a book club. The moral dilemma at the heart of the story and the development and deterioration of the relationships as the book progressed was interesting. The descriptive prose and clever construction was admired, encouraging some people to read it twice. Whilst some people found the beginning a little overlong, and stuck with it because it was for book club, and might not have persisted otherwise, the author certainly kept us guessing and rewarded our persistence in the end.
This book starts out as a fairly pedestrian love story but it soon becomes apparent that all is not what it seems. It almost comes into the category of what I call an “onion” book – one in which an event is relived/revisited many times, but on each occasion the next “layer” has been peeled back, revealing additional information and changing perspectives along the way, requiring the reader to re-evaluate the whole situation over and over again. In this sense, the book is interesting and cleverly constructed but not necessarily easy to read. The problem for me was that I don’t think this aspect of it was entirely successful as the way the information was withheld from the reader seemed contrived at times. In addition, the constantly jumping timeframes made it confusing in places. Whilst I did quite enjoy it while I was reading it, despite it being a little hard-going and unclear in places, I don’t think this is one of those books that will stay with me for any length of time. Worth a read but don’t expect miracles.