Mike’s Reviews > Pregnant Pause > Status Update

God, Nolan's really got me feeling sorry for Elly. I think the last time I felt this much sympathy toward a fictional character was over six months ago, when I read Like Mandarin. This book is just as flawed as that one was, but at the end of the day, I'm still going to remember it fondly because of that.

This has a pretty similar trajectory to Born Blue - a clueless girl gradually realizes how utterly fucked she is. But I think this works a little better, because it only covers a few weeks instead of the protagonist's entire life. I don't like most of Nolan's books, but this is easily one of the better ones. Still nowhere near as good as Crazy, but better than I was expecting.

I really, really want this to work, because this story has a lot of potential, and Elly is an excellent protagonist. But man, Nolan just doesn't seem to have any concept of subtlety. The dialogue between Elly, Ziggy, and Jen was terrible because of how nothing was left to subtext whatsoever. I'm also worried that this is going to be girl hate-y.

On one hand, I don't like that we're just told the entire backstory in a huge infodump in the first chapter. On the other hand, I kind of like the prose? I can't remember the last time I read a distinctly teenage voice that was even mildly convincing, and while this isn't the best thing I've ever read, the voice does work. And the story does look interesting, if kind of lacking in subtlety.