Book Review: Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Solitaire

by Alice Oseman

(Finished reading: 20/05/2020)

2/5 stars

Solitaire is a young adult novel that follows Tori, a pessimistic 16-year old who likes blogging and diet lemonade but despises the world. When a slightly anarchist student blog starts reeking chaos in the school by the means of ridiculous pranks, Tori really couldn’t care less. But then she meets Michael Holden, the weirdo that everyone talks about, and he encourages Tori to investigate the root of these pranks.

Firstly, I want to preface this review by addressing the fact that this novel was written by Alice Oseman when she was only 17-years old...which honestly just blows my mind. With this in mind, I truly appreciate that this book is such a huge achievement and an inspiration to all younger writers. It was so nice to see how much Oseman’s writing was grown and developed between Solitaire and Radio Silence (which I recently read). In this sense, I really appreciated where this book came from.

However, I cannot say I clicked with this novel. The tone was very distinctive and, although I got that it was supposed to be very sarcastic and pessimistic, I just found it tiring and it didn’t feel that this was equally distributed all the way through. Whilst the first half was promising, the second half of the book really let it down for me. It dragged in places, the pace felt stilted, the mystery was predictable, the plot seemed far-fetched and I really disliked the downright bizarre and problematic ending. There just seemed to be a lot going on which was unnecessary or just plain cringe-worthy. This was such a shame because the first half set up the story well and was really entertaining in places.

I want to resist comparing Solitaire to Radio Silence because the level of experience and the maturity of the writing is apparent. However, both covered similar themes such as teenage life, friendship, feeling out of place and feeling isolated. Radio Silence presented these themes beautifully and they felt real and relatable whereas Solitaire failed to achieve this in my opinion. Solitaire felt like a pretty unrealistic depiction of teenage life judging by how these teenagers reacted to one another and responded to certain situations. I found Tori’s character particularly unlikeable because of how she acted, to the point where I just wasn’t invested in her story and didn’t care about her problems. I found some of the other characters just plain forgettable because they seemed a little two-dimensional. For me, there were just too many unnecessary characters to follow and they seemed unlikely to fit together as a group. Whilst I related to some aspects of Tori, I didn’t feel like I really connected with any one character, which may be why I struggled to click with the novel.

Having said this, there were some really nice moments throughout. For example, I liked Tori’s pessimistic inner monologue in the first half of the novel. It was refreshing to read a book from this point of view instead of the usual lively, upbeat positive narratives that are so prevalent in young adult novels. In reality, being a teenager is hard and it’s natural to feel very negative about life and run down by school. I also liked the themes relating to mental health because of this. It really brought to life some of the genuine struggles that teenagers face. I also loved the portrayal of Nick and Charlie’s strong and healthy relationship. It’s not often you see a M/M relationship that is portrayed as the most strong and unproblematic relationship in a novel. This was so nice to see and I am keen to read Oseman's Heartstopper volumes because I would love to read more about these two characters. It was just a shame that these nice moments and themes were drowned by the parts that I disliked.

Overall, this book just was not for me. I totally appreciate that some readers may really click with it, I just did not. I would have much preferred a simpler story with fewer characters that was paced nicely rather than the chaos we are presented in this book. That being said, I appreciate how Oseman’s writing has developed since her debut novel and I am still very keen to read more of her work in the future.