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Cleopatra and Frankenstein: ‘Move over Sally Rooney: this is the hottest new book’ - Sunday Times

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i like flawed and unlikeable characters, but there was something about the way it was written here that did not work for me. They meet cute, and begin spouting off impossibly clever lines: all those sharp, witty retorts that you and I only think of twenty minutes after the fact. either way I have come to realize that I adore SUFFERING through books, I want to become really fucking depressed by a book, I want to feel the urge to rip my heart out and stab it back in. these ppl are boring and the author's attempts to make them into rooney-esque figures, well, tis' cringe. but alas, I had to stop reading at 51 % percent because I just couldn't bear it anymore, and I hardly DNF books.

However, with this comes a feeling that the characters which fill the pages in this book, cannot truly be written about in any sort of depth, because there are just too many of them. I guess, considering that it's been a month since I read this and I haven't been able to stop reading or talking or thinking about it, five stars. I have a super short attention span (like the rest of our population: thank you tiktok) and a mind that continually daydreams.

Mellors’ remarkably assured and sensitive debut … strongly evoke[s] Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life… At its core, it’s a novel about how love and lovers are easily misinterpreted and how romantic troubles affect friends and family. Other than that I don't have much else to say about this one aside from that I read this in a day because I couldn't put it down and quite liked it!

I, like every vaguely creative young person, have multiple diagnoses, but my brain chemistry failures never include installing art with my self harmed body at the center for my loved ones to find, I will tell you that. while the book jumps around between a cast of characters running full-speed around new york, they all feel fleshed out and their perspectives are equally as absorbing as the one before, with witty humour laced throughout. I also admired the decision to leave Cleo without a partner, and free of the men in her life that caused such destruction. I stayed attached to my tracic awfully flawed heroine, I guess that’s my greek side in me, whatever¿ (GIVE ME MORE TRAGIC AWFUL HEROINES OKAY? But none of them really matter very much, somewhat because all of them are supposed to be complicated and hard to like, but mostly because the greatest character of my reading life is in these pages.And then there is a whole cast of family and friends that are broadly described, although they hardly add to the main storyline and remain equally cliched: The mean stepmom, the jealous sister, the gay best friend. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art—and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking.

That's no excuse for their behavior, and of course not all people with these problems turn out like Cleo and Frank.Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.

It gives the story more depth rather than focussing on just the one relationship between our two main characters.On New Year’s Eve 2006, 24-year-old British artist Cleo meets Frank, a wealthy 40-something advertising executive in New York City. That kind of romance book makes me want to spew and my eyes will roll out my head if I don't pull them out first. There isn't much of a plot to speak of, beyond the shifting dynamics and relationships built between them, namely Cleo and Frank, a semi-green-card marriage built mostly on passion and age difference, and those around them: Frank's younger half-sister, Zoë; Frank's friends, Anders, and another more boring and half-hearted inclusion whose name I don't remember; Cleo's best friend Quentin; Zoë's best friend Audrey; and finally, ELEANOR. Their romance story isn't based on love at first sight and their marriage isn't created from some cringe high-school love. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is a journey and yes, it isn’t for everyone, but if you can get past the change in form and tone, I think you’ll be able to appreciate the fact that Mellors has managed to build a relationship with the reader and several very complicated characters in her very first novel while paying homage to New York.

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