Book Review: Room

TITLE: Room
AUTHOR: Emma Donoghue
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Adult
GENRE: Drama/Thrillerish...
PREMISE: Jack has lived in Room with his mother ever since he was born. Things change when his mother decides they need to leave...
MY REVIEW: Room is one of those that has been on the list for awhile now. I remember it making a splash when I first started this blog, and then the movie came out a few years ago. I finally got around to reading it and...I don't know, I have mixed feelings about it.
The writing is damn good. Donoghue does a great job of getting into Jack's head. I can tell she did the psychology research of what happens when you've been captive for several years. She does a good job of showing us things through Jack's head without spelling things out for us. The way this is told is probably the most clever thing about the book, really. Story/pace wise...it's a little eh for me.
One of the main issues I have is that it's very slow. Especially in the beginning when they're going about their day to day things. I was a little surprised it didn't end with them getting out. After struggling through the last bit, I can't help but wonder if it might have been best to just leave it there because the last bit after was kind of tedious and felt tacked on to be honest.
So yeah, this was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It has phenomenal writing, so I may be checking out some of Donoghue's other stuff. But the story...just sort of bored me because it honestly wasn't really my thing.
WHO SHOULD READ: Emma Donoghue fans, you like character driven books, fans of the book Stolen
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five clever uses of the narrator