8.08.2016

Book Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go



Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.
Rating: ★★★★★

        I got this book a few months ago from a garage sale and I decided to take it with me during summer vacations. I've been staying at my aunt's house and there isn't much to do so I read this book non-stop for a few days and I got really into it! The world building and plot are really interesting! 
     I read some reviews after I finished it and apparently some people didn't like the fact that the characters  weren't very relatable. But like, not all characters have to be! Some characters are just so different from you and they live in such a completely different reality that it's hard to relate to them but that's okay! At least for me. I liked the characters; Manchee was, hands down, my favourite. I loved how funny he was and how cool it was to know what the animals were saying! And particularly Manchee, who is a dog, because he didn't have a very extensive vocabulary and what he said was always very believable. Like, I could imagine a dog saying that. I liked both Todd and Viola and their relationship, and I felt really bad for both of them because their situation was awful. I have to admit that Aaron was kind of a hard to believe character. I don't wanna spoil anyone but after everything that happened to him i just couldn't believe that he kept going!
     The whole noise thing was very interesting and I just wanna know more about it and more about the world that Todd lives! The writing style was a bit hard to get to to be honest... All the misspellings and the accents being written as spoken were a bit annoying for me but I got past that and read without really noticing them. This book has a lot of underlying themes about sexism, colonization, racism, violence... And it's a very dark novel at times, not your average book about a boy and his dog going on an adventure. The book is so much more than the synopsis promises that it is. I was not expecting what I read at all and I don't wanna say too much about it because I think that the best way to get into this book is by not knowing much about it. 
     The thing that I think should have been a little bit different in this book is the amount of bad things that happen to the main characters. Like seriously?! The characters talk so much about hope and about how things will get better but it rarely does! Every time the characters go somewhere or do something, another thing bad happens to them. It's unbelievable and you keep hoping for things to change. I hope (there's that word again) that the characters get luckier on the next book. Although I can't see how that's gonna happen after that ending... 
     But anyways, this has gone to my favourites shelf on Goodreads. So that means that I definitely think you should read it and I hope you will like it as much as I did.   
     

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