Because You’ll Never Meet Me by Leah Thomas
Review by Lauren
Source: copy from netgalley; all opinions are my own
Official Summary: Ollie and Moritz are best friends, but they can never meet. Ollie is
allergic to electricity. Contact with it causes debilitating seizures.
Moritz’s weak heart is kept pumping by an electronic pacemaker. If they
ever did meet, Ollie would seize. But Moritz would die without his
pacemaker. Both hermits from society, the boys develop a fierce bond
through letters that become a lifeline during dark times—as Ollie loses
his only friend, Liz, to the normalcy of high school and Moritz deals
with a bully set on destroying him.
DNF Review: I really loved this summary and I thought the book would be a good fit for me. Obviously, it was not and I ended up not finishing the book. This is my first DNF review on the blog. That doesn’t mean I’ve finished every single book I read, but those are usually personal or library titles. When it comes to review books, I usually request things that I’m fairly sure I will enjoy, and it tends to work out. However, even though I didn’t finish this one, I do think it would work for other people.
Like I said before, the premise is great. I like the idea of having a friend that you could never meet in person. Well, I like the idea in a book – in real life, it would be frustrating. Now, the main reason I didn’t end up finishing this book is because it just fell a bit flat for me and I didn’t find all aspects of it realistic.
Ollie being allergic to electricity made sense to me and I think it worked. Moritz, though, not only has a pacemaker, he also has no eyes. That’s right – he’s not blind; he literally has no eyes. He tends to handle this well though because of echolocation, which is essentially how bats can see in the dark. He is able to tell where people and things are located. Again, this isn’t too bad to handle. However, Moritz would describe people way too accurately for my taste and for me, I don’t think he would be able to, unless he just made it up. I believe the publisher had a note in the beginning that mentioned having to suspend belief a bit, and sometimes I can do that, but it just didn’t work here.
I suppose the overall story was moving a bit slow for me too. I might have a better chance of reading a physical copy of this instead of on my kindle, but for now, I’m going to pass.
What do you think? Will you give this a shot? Have you read it already and want to share your thoughts?
Hmmm, it's an interesting concept, but it sounds like a pass.
I don't think I will be reading this one either but I really appreciate the honest review and how you balanced some good along with what you didn't like.
Wow..the premise is interesting between the allergy and no eyes *shivers* Creepy.
I've never read this book before, but I could see how it would be unbelievable that a person with no eyes could describe people so accurately. When a book is too slow paced for me I find it hard to get through. The fact that it also fell flat for you explains your DNF. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
Lindy@ A Bookish Escape
I was super torn about this one!! I agree, a LOT of disbelief had to be suspended. >_< I didn't think the echolocation was realistic at all. Moritz ends up being able to read flat letters on a page through it. Um. No. I was googling about echolocation and, granted, I believe the author would've done more research than me googling for a few minutes, but I didn't find evidence that anyone could EVER do that. And the ending is super sci-fi which threw me. I thought it was going to be a feelsy heart-warming contemporary, and it just was not. Olly though. SO CUTE AND ADORABLE.
I have to admit, the synopsis sounds wildly intriguing, but the fact that you DNF it leads me to believe I probably wouldn't either. :/
xx
The book sounded so good… until the echolocation thing. I can suspend my disbelief for a while, but not all of it. C'mon I think it's pretty lazy to just say "hey I hope you can believe this for me" instead of making it believable… 🙁
Marianne @ <a href="http://boricuanbookworms.com'>Boricuan Bookworms</a>.
Umm, yeah I'm pretty sucky at suspending belief for the most part because I'm just so left brained (thankfully I was still able to enjoy Jurassic World even though they got so many things wrong!). I do think that's a cool idea though, being able to use echolocation like bats… if only that idea was toned down a bit. I definitely appreciate that you're sharing your honest thoughts here even though the book wasn't for you!
Haha, coincidence, I'm actually reviewing this one tomorrow! Yeah, I mean, their "situations" were a little…out there, especially Mortiz's,I did enjoy it, but it did take me a while to actually get into it, but for the most part, I liked it. I'm just ignoring the ending though.
That's a fair review considering the books just was not for you. I'd probably pass on this one myself.
I have a copy of this one on my shelf, and I keep forgetting about it to be honest. I think I'll give it a go next month! I'm glad I know that it falls a bit closer to magical realism, from what I gather from other reviews. I hope it works out, but if not I'll easily DNF it 🙂
The book review snippet sounded interesting, but that is unfortunate that it lost steam for you during the reading of it.
Too bad it didn't work out for you. It's still on my wish list though…will have to see how I fair. Thanks for the share!
The allergy to electricity sounds so interesting and I've never read about that before, but having to suspend my disbelief while reading kind of makes me cautious. Great review Mag!