Cannonball Read - Book 80

So, Vendela Vida, the author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, is married to Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and founder of McSweeney's publishing house. And I don't really like Dave Eggers (we get it, you're literary, now back off). But someone in my book club recommended LtNLEYN, and let me borrow it, so here we are.

I think my biggest problem with this book is it was trying too hard. I finished it, but I never got into it - too much darkness, too many twists. Clarissa, the protagonist, wasn't sympathetic at all, and the family drama (where's her mother? who's her father?) didn't really move me. It seems to me that Vida was trying to write this little gem of a tragic family tale, and instead ended up with junk jewelry: an imitation of a gem.

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name - C+