#60 An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

This book is about April May, a 23 year old design graduate who accidentally stumbles across a metal statue in the middle of a New Year street at 3am. April calls her best friend Andy who has been failing at becoming a viral sensation. They make a gimmicky video in which April pretends to interview the statue that she names Carl. Overnight the video goes viral and they wake to discover that there is a Carl in every major city worldwide.

At first when i read the premise i thought 'hmmm great idea but how will that span over 300 pages', but there were so many twists to this tale. This book massively took me by surprise. It was SO Hank Green, i even in parts read some of it in his voice. At first i was afraid to pick this book up as ive been so invested in John Greens books for years and if i didnt like Hanks then id be letting not only myself but my favourite vlogbrothers down. Im so glad that this wasnt the case. This read as so realistic, you can tell Hank is writing it as he knows what its like to be internet famous and for your videos to go viral. He probably knows a thing or two about trolls and people hating you for no reason also so it really added another dimension to this already fantastic story.

I have noticed a correlation to my some of my favourite books specifically sci-fi type books and that is that they need to have a few pop culture references to it, if a book mentions something geeky that i like it automatically has me on side and unsurprisingly Hank really delivered in this area. A few things that were mentioned in this book that made me fan girl it even more:

• NaNoWriMo
• Reddit
• Pokemon
• A female president! (off topic but still!)
• Pokemon
• Pop Tarts
• Queen

I thought John Green was the king of writing a relatable, realistic quirky geek girl but April May was just perfect! Way to go Hank! 

The dream sequence reminded me a little of Black Mirror Bandersnatch, it has similar vibes to a chhose your own adventure story which was really cool, I loved the idea that everyone was having the dream and were trying to figure out the sequences. it was so clever and well done. 

I loved the idea that the Carls were alien life forms that were on a mission to get humans to work together to figure it all out. It left me with so many questions though which i really hope he touches on in the next book! Is this book a metaphor for how the world responds to things we dont understand? Is this Hanks interpretation of humanity? One of my favourite quotes from the book is 'This is what humanity is, solidarity in the face of fear', I think he was verbalising (through April May) that we shouldnt be so quick to assume that something is evil just because we cannot understand it. It is a very strong and beautiful message.   

5 stars from me and i can already see this book making my top books i read in 2019 list and its still only January! Oh and dont worry Hank, i forgive you for getting a Carly Rae Jepsen song stuck in my head for days! Can we discuss that ending cliffhanger? I need the next book now! So far we have no title or release date *cries*

#59 Beartown

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

So i heard a LOT about this book towards the end of 2018, everyone that read it on my GR seemed to give it 5 stars. All i knew was that it was about a rape that happens in a small hockey town and how everyone in the town deals with it.

I was very pumped to start this and 150 pages in and NOTHING had happened except a bunch of teens played hockey, which at this point i should mention i know literally nothing about. There is a lot of characters introduced and some have more back story than others but it was quite tricky to remember who was who and how they were relevant, in the end i had to do a bit of a 'family tree' type drawing as i was so confused.


So the main players (excuse the pun) in this story are:

• Kevin- 17 year old star player on the junior hockey team, probably the best hockey player that Beartown has ever seen. He is an only child, has grown up in an affluent home but his parents really dont know how to be parents
• Peter & Kira- Peter is the GM of the hockey team and is so very invested in getting Beartown back on the hockey map. Kira his wife is a lawyer, they have 2 children together Maya and Leo.
• Maya- 15 year old who nearly died as a little girl, she is close with her parents and her best friend Ana
• Amat- also 15 years old, he is on the younger hockey team but is put on the junior team before the semi-final as he is the fastest player on the younger team. His mother is a cleaner at the ice rink and raised him alone. He is also in love with Maya.
• Benji- Kevins best friend. His father committed suicide in the forest of Beartown when he was younger. He is an aggressive player on the junior team. He is very close to his 3 sisters and mum. Also has a drug problem.

The story kicks off around the 184 page mark which is ridiculous that it took that amount of pages for something to happen but wow did it pack a punch. It made for very difficult reading. One thing i will say is that Backman has handled this topic very very well and a massive kudos to his translator Neil Smith as this was written in Swedish originally i believe and was translated impeccably.

This was really difficult to read as a mother of a daughter. I was so conflicted as i understood a lot of view points, some wrong and some right. The characters were written so perfectly, they were so real and you could imagine Beartown existing. A stand out character for me was Amat, hes impoverished but he loves hockey. He has to choose between doing whats right and hockey and for the majority of the second half of the book i really didnt know what he would choose.

Benji is also an amazingly complex character that i fell in love with, he was so rough around the edges but possibly the only character in this whole book that did the right thing from the very beginning regardless of what it cost him.

I honestly could gush about this book all day, it was just so well done. The ending is beautifully wrapped up, i was actually very shocked to find that it had a sequel (which ive already downloaded) but i can only hope that it follows a few of the characters 10 years later but we will see.

My first 5 star read of 2019!