Karen Rivers

Pretty Implausible Premise

❝ “I think ghosts exist because we’re not ready to stop loving the people who died, and that kind of love doesn’t have a form to take, so it takes the shape of the person who was lost.” ❞

⚠️ Content Warnings: Abandonment, Car Accident, Child Death/Death, Chronic Illness, Grief

❓ #QOTD What memory do you associate with your favorite taste? ❓

🦇 Hattie and Presley are both haunted by ghosts. For Hattie, it's the young swimmer she couldn't save from drowning. For Presley, it's his twin brother; the one everyone seemed to love more. Between sharing grief, ghosts, and lost Olympic dreams, Hattie and Presley have more in common than they realize, leading to an instant connection that almost seems as implausible as love. When the ghosts of their pasts become too much, can they work through their trauma together, or will it tear them apart?

💜 Karen Rivers does a stunning job of slipping us into the minds of two grieving, traumatized teens who have turned those traumas into their form of normalcy. This is a story that, months into the future, I know will linger in my mind the way many books about grief do. Despite the heavy themes, however, the book is never really emotional in a way that causes us to grieve alongside the MCs. The lyrical, head-spinning prose forces readers to feel the weight of what Hattie and Presley feel, but many of these moments are fragmented. The story covers beautiful lessons like healing and forgiveness; feelings that are messy as our MCs' minds. 

🦇 Unfortunately, it's not until 45% of the way into this book that Hattie and Presley have any real interaction with one another. The book focuses on their individual traumas long before we see how their ghosts bring them together. Unfortunately, there's no real action in this book until readers are halfway through. The writer also relies on a long-winded, run-on sentence structure that, while reflective of how thoughts spiral in our heads, can become dizzying to read on the page. I've bit my tongue about this for a VERY long time, but I'm done. Too many books I've read, especially in the past year, rely on Taylor Swift references to get you to love the MC. Try anything else to make an MC relatable (because for many of us, it's not). Literally, anything else. (Watches my follower count drop and doesn't care.) There is so much to love about Hattie and Presley (who are beautifully weird in their own ways), that gets lost to thought spirals and references. There are also segments from the book Hattie is obsessed with (reading it helps ease her anxiety), that show us Hattie is living more in the book than she is in her own life. Those segments don't really add to the story until the end, though, and therefore steal too much space on the page. As a result, a lot of the character development felt rushed and unnatural. 

🦇 Recommended for Fans of I'll Give You the Sun or The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (which still weigh heavy on my heart), The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R Pan, or All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven.

🦇 Major thanks to the author @karenrivers and publisher @algonquinyr for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #APrettyImplausiblePremise

Jazelle H

🦇 Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

❝ “I think ghosts exist because we’re not ready to stop loving the people who died, and that kind of love doesn’t have a form to take, so it takes the shape of the person who was lost.” ❞

⚠️ Content Warnings: Abandonment, Car Accident, Child Death/Death, Chronic Illness, Grief

❓ #QOTD What memory do you associate with your favorite taste? ❓
 
🦇 Hattie and Presley are both haunted by ghosts. For Hattie, it's the young swimmer she couldn't save from drowning. For Presley, it's his twin brother; the one everyone seemed to love more. Between sharing grief, ghosts, and lost Olympic dreams, Hattie and Presley have more in common than they realize, leading to an instant connection that almost seems as implausible as love. When the ghosts of their pasts become too much, can they work through their trauma together, or will it tear them apart?

💜 Karen Rivers does a stunning job of slipping us into the minds of two grieving, traumatized teens who have turned those traumas into their form of normalcy. This is a story that, months into the future, I know will linger in my mind the way many books about grief do. Despite the heavy themes, however, the book is never really emotional in a way that causes us to grieve alongside the MCs. The lyrical, head-spinning prose forces readers to feel the weight of what Hattie and Presley feel, but many of these moments are fragmented. The story covers beautiful lessons like healing and forgiveness; feelings that are messy as our MCs' minds. 

🦇 Unfortunately, it's not until 45% of the way into this book that Hattie and Presley have any real interaction with one another. The book focuses on their individual traumas long before we see how their ghosts bring them together. Unfortunately, there's no real action in this book until readers are halfway through. The writer also relies on a long-winded, run-on sentence structure that, while reflective of how thoughts spiral in our heads, can become dizzying to read on the page. I've bit my tongue about this for a VERY long time, but I'm done. Too many books I've read, especially in the past year, rely on Taylor Swift references to get you to love the MC. Try anything else to make an MC relatable (because for many of us, it's not). Literally, anything else. (Watches my follower count drop and doesn't care.) There is so much to love about Hattie and Presley (who are beautifully weird in their own ways), that gets lost to thought spirals and references. There are also segments from the book Hattie is obsessed with (reading it helps ease her anxiety), that show us Hattie is living more in the book than she is in her own life. Those segments don't really add to the story until the end, though, and therefore steal too much space on the page. As a result, a lot of the character development felt rushed and unnatural. 

🦇 Recommended for Fans of I'll Give You the Sun or The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (which still weigh heavy on my heart), The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R Pan, or All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven.

✨ The Vibes ✨
🐋 Lots of Taylor Swift References
🦈 Unique, Winding Prose
⛸️ Young Adult Romance
🔥 Processing Grief/Trauma
📚 Book Within a Book

🦇 Major thanks to the author @karenrivers and publisher @algonquinyr for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. #APrettyImplausiblePremise

Pretty Implausible Premise

Reviews