Review of Like My Mother Before Me
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Lhais Teixeira
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- Latest Review: Like My Mother Before Me by Naley Gonzalez
Review of Like My Mother Before Me
[Following is a volunteer review of "Like My Mother Before Me" by Naley Gonzalez.]
Naley Gonzalez's book "Like My Mother Before Me" is a book filled with suspense and drama, ghosts and demons, but still focuses on the daily problems of the main character, Alizé, who is a normal teenage girl who worries only about her volleyball team and how to get her father to stop nagging at her to do her homework. Until the night she enters her father's office and finds a ghost. This, added to the conversation she hears about her mother's supposed sickness and her showing the same symptoms, makes Alizé realize she might have even bigger problems than her father's new girlfriend and the boy who keeps flirting with her. She might be going crazy, like her mother before her.
The book deals heavily with Alizé's everyday life, even more than the supernatural things happening to her, and, honestly, it was hard for me to get involved with this story because of this. It felt like a roller coaster with too many subplots; just as I began to engage with one storyline, Alizé would already be worrying about something else, and new things and issues were introduced to the story while others were barely dealt with. I couldn't get involved too much with anything in the book.
I had similar problems with the side characters. The book doesn't dive a lot into them, focusing more on Alizé's thoughts and impressions of them, making it hard for me to know any of them enough to have opinions on them. As for Alizé, she evoked mixed feelings in me. Sometimes, I liked her, but, mostly, I found her quite egocentric and dumb. She blamed others for things they were not even at fault for and did not realize the most simple and obvious things.
The characters were part of the reason the romance seemed somewhat forced. The love interest barely knew her but was in love with her enough to let her treat him badly repetitively and make love declarations all the time. By the way, he came across as a bit weird and cringeworthy to me when he got introduced to the plot, but I ended up liking him more as the story progressed, even if we didn't get to know much about him either.
However, I did appreciate the mystery element of the plot. I enjoy stories that explore the possibility of a main character being mentally unstable or that the supernatural elements might be real. I just wish the eerie or supernatural aspects had been more vivid and detailed, but I think the book will suit very well an audience that likes the daily life aspects being deeply shown in a book. I didn't find any typos or grammatical errors; I did find a whole dialogue that seemed to be repeating, but, aside from that, the book did have an exceptional editing quality.
Overall, I think the book wasn't bad; the plot is a very good one, and the mystery of the supernatural things happening or the main character losing her mind is very entertaining, but it had the potential to be much more than what it was. There are too many subplots, and they are not properly worked with before we go to another; the same happens to the characters. Additionally, the content didn’t align well with the synopsis. These are aspects that held me back from giving five stars to the book, so I'm giving 3 out of 5 stars to "Like My Mother Before Me.".
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Like My Mother Before Me
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Naley Gonzalez's book "Like My Mother Before Me" is a book filled with suspense and drama, ghosts and demons, but still focuses on the daily problems of the main character, Alizé, who is a normal teenage girl who worries only about her volleyball team and how to get her father to stop nagging at her to do her homework. Until the night she enters her father's office and finds a ghost. This, added to the conversation she hears about her mother's supposed sickness and her showing the same symptoms, makes Alizé realize she might have even bigger problems than her father's new girlfriend and the boy who keeps flirting with her. She might be going crazy, like her mother before her.
The book deals heavily with Alizé's everyday life, even more than the supernatural things happening to her, and, honestly, it was hard for me to get involved with this story because of this. It felt like a roller coaster with too many subplots; just as I began to engage with one storyline, Alizé would already be worrying about something else, and new things and issues were introduced to the story while others were barely dealt with. I couldn't get involved too much with anything in the book.
I had similar problems with the side characters. The book doesn't dive a lot into them, focusing more on Alizé's thoughts and impressions of them, making it hard for me to know any of them enough to have opinions on them. As for Alizé, she evoked mixed feelings in me. Sometimes, I liked her, but, mostly, I found her quite egocentric and dumb. She blamed others for things they were not even at fault for and did not realize the most simple and obvious things.
The characters were part of the reason the romance seemed somewhat forced. The love interest barely knew her but was in love with her enough to let her treat him badly repetitively and make love declarations all the time. By the way, he came across as a bit weird and cringeworthy to me when he got introduced to the plot, but I ended up liking him more as the story progressed, even if we didn't get to know much about him either.
However, I did appreciate the mystery element of the plot. I enjoy stories that explore the possibility of a main character being mentally unstable or that the supernatural elements might be real. I just wish the eerie or supernatural aspects had been more vivid and detailed, but I think the book will suit very well an audience that likes the daily life aspects being deeply shown in a book. I didn't find any typos or grammatical errors; I did find a whole dialogue that seemed to be repeating, but, aside from that, the book did have an exceptional editing quality.
Overall, I think the book wasn't bad; the plot is a very good one, and the mystery of the supernatural things happening or the main character losing her mind is very entertaining, but it had the potential to be much more than what it was. There are too many subplots, and they are not properly worked with before we go to another; the same happens to the characters. Additionally, the content didn’t align well with the synopsis. These are aspects that held me back from giving five stars to the book, so I'm giving 3 out of 5 stars to "Like My Mother Before Me.".
******
Like My Mother Before Me
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes
Latest Review: Like My Mother Before Me by Naley Gonzalez
