On the Back of the Book
Fifteen-year-old
Christopher has a photographic memory. He understands maths. He understands
science. What he can’t understand are other human beings. When he finds his
neighbour’s dog lying dead on the lawn, he decides to track down the killer and
write a murder mystery about it. But what other mysteries will he end up
uncovering?
Pre Read
Thoughts
This is one of November’s group reads for my Goodreads group
and that’s pretty much the only reason I’m reading this. I had heard of it
before, it’s just not a book that I’ve ever been interested in. I found this in
my local Scope charity shop for £1.50. It’s not in the best condition but since
the money goes to charity I think I can live with that. The cover I have is
very eye-catching and I really like it. The synopsis is interesting and I can’t
wait to see if this book lives up to the hype that it seems to have gotten.
Post Read
Thoughts
I wasn’t a massive fan of this boo to be honest. The POV
that draws you in pushes you away with constant onslaughts of information. My
brain is exhausted from all the mathematical and scientific stuff that my brain
just didn’t understand. Things that other people loved about this (the graphs
and the chapters being prime numbers) I detested. The graphs broke up the story
and the prime numbers took away the sense of order that normal chapter numbers
bring. Something which I don’t normally complain about but feel compelled to do
so with this is the language. Now, I’m all for swearing, I do it all the time
but there’s a lot in this book and it’s billed on the cover as “children’s”. I
was absolutely horrified to see the C-word at one point! That’s a word I haven’t
seen in adult books. It’s just not written in books, it’s disrespectful. That
by itself really affected my view of the book.
I didn’t really feel anything for the characters, but then
again neither did Christopher. I get that he finds emotions difficult to
understand because he only thinks in a logical way with science and numbers but
the lack of emotional depth held back the book in the sense of character
development. I didn’t like Christopher’s father. His actions weren’t right but
the consequences were well portrayed by the author.
Overall I didn’t find this book to be anything special. It’s
a contradiction for me, it’s everything I love about a book but it reads like everything
I hate. I liked some parts of the story but just as I was starting to get into
the flow of the story there’s be another page of either maths or science that I
didn’t understand. The book made me feel stupid and I don’t appreciate that. I know
I’m probably in the minority when it comes to not enjoying this (I normally am
when it comes to these things) but there was something lacking for me.
My Rating
2 stars – I should be giving this three but some of the
language used was extreme and I’m making a point of my objection by taking away
a star. Other than that this is one of those books that people rave about
reading. I won’t be raving though as it failed to entertain me. I recommend
this if you’re a fan of books with an interesting lead character. That fact
that Christopher is autistic intrigued me and I thought that looking inside the
head of an autistic was interesting, though slightly confusing.
A Final
Note
The language isn’t good. So I wouldn’t give this to a kid or
a young adult. I’m sorry but I’d hate for a kid to read this and then go to
school saying that word.
On a lighter note, this contains spoilers for Sir Arthur
Conan-Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. So if you want to read that then
you should give this a miss until afterwards.
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