Girl Well Read

A special thank you to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Not my favourite of Shriver's work, in fact, I struggled with even finishing. A futuristic dystopian story is an acquired taste and not really at the top of my heap, so I guess your are wondering why I even requested this title. The truth is, I find Shriver brilliant and her works fascinating and couldn't wait to get my hands on this. Unfortunately, it totally missed the mark. It is too heavy on the economics and the reader is bogged down with way too much detail; this should've been the backdrop of the story, not forefront.

There was a lack of character development partly because there are so many characters, and partly because she simply covers too much ground, thus the story becomes ineffective and misses the mark. I did appreciate her cheeky humour, but feel I may have missed a lot of the subtle nuances that make Shriver great because I simply checked out.

http://girlwellread.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-mandibles-by-lionel-shriver.html