High-Rise (Movie Tie-In Editions, #0) (1970s a)

by J. G. Ballard

[lindsey]

To be quite honest, this is not a book I would normally be interested in reading, and the only reason I decided to give it a try was because Tom Hiddleston narrated it. And, honestly, the only reason I finished it was because Tom Hiddleston narrated it.

It was a struggle to finish, I'm not going to lie. It started out okay - I was interested, at least - but it quickly went downhill, and it was all I could do to keep listening. I am truly baffled by the number of glowing reviews on Goodreads because I found nothing redeemable about it at all. I know everyone has different tastes, but I truly didn't enjoy this one.

Maybe I missed something pivotal, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will be only too happy to tell me I missed the point, but I just didn't like anything about this one. I didn't like the characters, the plot, the pacing, or the dialogue.

I wouldn't have reviewed this one at all if not for my goal to review every book I read in 2020 because I typically don't review books I dislike. I deleted my first, more scathing, review for this, in an effort to write a review that didn't include thirty exclamation points and multiple all-caps sentences.

Story aside, Tom Hiddleston's narration was the only high point for me. He's an excellent narrator with a soothing voice, which was good because I needed to be calmed down while listening to this book.