From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver

Discussion: 2016 Read Harder Challenge

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2016 Read Harder Challenge

* Read Harder Challenge Plans: 2016
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last updated Dec 19, 2017 10:57AM

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* Challenge Tasks: The Complete List
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last updated Jan 19, 2016 06:00AM

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What Members Thought

Feb 26, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it did not like it

Shelves: lotsa-buzz, fiction, authors-i-don-t-ever-want-to-read-a, did-not-finish, unreliable-narrator, book-club-read

Book club book for March 2012 - Holy CRAP this looks long! apparently everyone else in my book club has more reading time than I do ...

A few chapters in, and I am NOT liking this book. This seems to be set up as a series of letters from a woman to her ex-husband, a few years after their son shot and killed other students at the local school. The book and I got off on the wrong foot from the first sentence - I despise the narrator. She is so snobby, so ... PRETENTIOUS. Ugh. I started skimming, t ...more

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Sep 09, 2010 Stephanie rated it liked it

Shelves: gave-up, 2010

I'm really torn about this book; on the one hand, it was compelling - I don't think its story or the questions it asks will ever leave my brain. On the other hand, it was so upsetting and disturbing that I couldn't actually read it - I skimmed.

I think the timing is bad; reading about a mother unable to love her child at a time when I am seriously considering becoming a parent myself was not a good idea. (And said child being a sociopath - because of the mother or just born bad, that's for the re ...more

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Mar 18, 2008 Jaime rated it it was amazing

Shelves: general-fiction, read-2005

I really wasn’t expecting much when I picked up this book for $4 at the book fair. Man, was I wrong. This book was extremely captivating. At first, I was concerned that the narrator’s language was way too flowery and extravagant, but once you got to know her a little, you realized that it fit, exactly. And despite these letters being written after Thursday, information is handed out in tantalizing little nuggets, and you don’t know the full story until nearly the very end. I’m still internally d ...more

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Apr 04, 2010 Allison Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, literary-fiction

This would be a GREAT book for a book club discussion although, with a bunch of women, it might end in a brawl. Not for the faint of heart--this book can get hairy but it's a very interesting look at a sociopathic child and how everyone in the family sees their relationships differently. A fictional account of a boy who pulls a Columbine type incident and his mother's letters to the father replaying their life up to that point as she tries to figure out what went wrong. VERY thought provoking an ...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Megan Neumann rated it really liked it

This book was a compulsive read. I read until I couldn't stand it any more and then put it down until I couldn't stand it any more. . . It is not a "beach read" for sure, Very compelling with an ending I didn't see until very close to the end of the book. Worth reading - but not if you are faint of heart. ...more

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