This book has been called polarizing: there's the group of people who think it's the most stunning prose ever, and then the group of people that can't get over the fact that it's super boring (me).
I cannot get on board with Sally Rooney's characters. Marianne was this Mary Sue who was quirky and beautiful when it served the bare-bones plot, but socially awkward and ugly when that served the plot. Connell was somehow simultaneously the most flavorless character I've ever read and also a terrible person (and he's not supposed to be). The way he continually says something to the effect of "I knew how much power I had over Marianne. I could tell her to do anything and I know she'd do it. I like that feeling" was disgusting. It would be one thing if he started this way and then had some growth but nope he's like that right up to the end. I get that it was supposed to play on Marianne's trauma-induced masochism, but it's not for me. Other than the main two characters, no one stuck out to me except Alan. The one satisfying part of the book was when Connell decked him (as I wanted to in that moment).
I felt like the pacing of the novel was off. It feels like there are decades supposed to be covered but it's really only a few years in their late teens/maybe early twenties. By the end of the book the characters are talking like they're so much older and wiser than they were in the beginning of the book, but they're still only like 20 and hardly wiser. It's hard to write a book with poor pacing when there's no plot to speak of anyway but somehow it was achieved here. I think that's one of those not-for-me things; I just can't read a book that doesn't have a driving force. The (uninteresting) characters are just ambling through life with a lot of narration and thoughts on life and the universe.
I think that last thing is what makes people love the book--they can ignore the lack of plot if the philosophy presented by the characters' inner monologue says something interesting or poetic. I definitely picked up on the philosophizing, but I did not like the messages therein. The big one that sticks out to me is Marianne saying that the perpetrator of bullying/abuse is just as traumatically affected as the victim and for even longer. This did not sit well with me at all. I guess Marianne gets a free pass to assert this as someone who was bullied in school, but it just grossed me out. There were other things that also didn't quite sit right with me but that was the biggest one.
Final verdict: The book is plotless and full of lackluster characters.
