About The Book
“Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well-liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be. They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that feels to Lauren like she is reclaiming her lost adolescence.” – Goodreads
My Review: If You Have Time
There were a lot of good reviews about this book, but I found it perplexing. I always found it difficult to follow books that jump around on a timeline, and this book weaves in between reality and a dream-state. The narrator is unreliable, and the relationships she builds (emotionally inappropriate, with a student) shows her spiralling down in her attempt to grapple with her grief and loneliness, but I just couldn’t relate.
Favourite Quotes
“Lying had become second nature in my adult life. It was a way to spare strangers difficult conversations. The lies only ever pertained to my own information, and nothing I said was ever that important; the lies only served to keep me smiling, to keep the conversation from going off the cliff of sympathy, and to keep me from breaking down.”
Why You Should Read It
The writing is great, even if the plot is a little lacking.