Book Review: Carry On

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love Rainbow Rowell.

However, this is my least favorite of her books so far. Mostly, I think, because fan fiction isn't something I'm conversant in.

As always, Rowell paints her characters brilliantly. Her strength is in how they talk, how they feel, how they interact. Her characters have always been in places I recognize in my head; areas of Omaha and Lincoln that I've spent time in. So before I even open the book, I have an idea of where these people are going to be; my sense of the place in which she puts her people is predetermined.

Until Carry On. I never felt like I could see, smell and touch where these characters were spending their time. I wanted more about where they were. I wanted more backstory. More description. More to allow me to live in their shoes for 300 pages.

All that said, in the end, it didn't really matter. Rowell's characters, as usual, are brilliantly drawn and intricately woven together in a tapestry that eventually made missing the sense of place less distracting and disturbing.


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