Tender

 Book 25 of my 2021 Reading Challenge

Tender

by Belinda McKeon

Summary (via the book jacket)

published 2015

From almost the moment they meet, Catherine and James become as close as two friends can be. Witty, talented and charming, James is unlike anyone Catherine has encountered before, and she finds herself hungry to explore with him all Dublin in the '90s has to offer - even as James struggles to find his place in it. 

First Impressions/Judging a Book by Its Cover

This was the book in the second month of the "books and chocolate" subscription boxes I received as a gift for Christmas.  The box also included a bookmark, Montezuma's butterscotch milk chocolate, Speculoos Belgian biscuits, and Luxury hot chocolate.

I haven't heard of the book before.  The description peaks my interest but is also vague enough that I feel like I'm going in pretty blind -- is it going to be a quiet book about relationships?  Is it going to be a thriller about obsession?  As a note to myself to check back in after I've read it...it looks like it has the potential to be unsettling and I wonder if that assumption is true.

The book has a shiny, almost glossy-photo feel to it.  The photo/cover art is good quality and adds to the uncertainty of what I'm going to read because it could be interpreted many different ways.

My Opinion

3 stars

As I look over my notes, the number of times I wrote "uh oh..." or "oh no..." really indicates how I felt reading it.  It was like a slow-moving car crash where it felt inevitable that something bad was going to happen yet I couldn't look away.  The characters were grounded in reality and I understood why they were behaving the way they were even though I didn't like it.  Their trajectory made sense but it was also so wrong.  I think it was the mother in me - I remember being in college and feeling like every moment was THE MOST important but I just wanted to hug them and tell them to take a breath and calm down. 

The book felt damp and overcast.  The author did a good job conveying the mental state of the characters.  The longer chapter/sections created spurts of writing and disjointed singular thoughts that felt murky and slippery, like the point was just out of grasp for the character but obvious to an outsider (both characters other than Catherine and James and us the readers).

The 3 star rating is primarily for the ending.  After the tenseness and short, terse emotions of the book, the wrap-up dragged for me.  Even though I appreciated knowing where the characters ended up, it felt long and the conversations were a little too "on the nose" for all the subtlety and evasiveness the relationships had been based on earlier.

Looking at my first impression and checking back in, it was unsettling but not for the reasons I thought.  It's definitely not a thriller but there are psychological twists.  It's also funny I noticed the photo feel of the book because photography factored heavily into the book.