What do you think?
Rate this book
Ran
Star athlete Wilco Bryce is ten seconds away from the Olympics when his career ends in injury. He is forced to reconstruct his young life and identity in this tale of running, reinvention, and romance. By leading a group of young runners, he unlocks the knowledge that happiness is the intentional pursuit of shared goals and that real joy is only possible when we're connected to others.
458 pages, Paperback
Published February 4, 2024
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
Did Not Finish
June 22, 2026I’ll be honest - no idea how this one ended up in my KU library. It could be that someone I know or follow read it and rated it highly enough that I looked it up. It could be something Kindle or Amazon suggested to me based on something else, and it looked interesting enough that I picked it up. I have no idea. I just know that I looked to see which KU books I had on hand that I hadn’t read yet and this one came up and I opened it sort of by accident, but then read the blurb and it sounded interesting and I thought, “why not?” And started it.
My first problem is the highlighting. And honestly, this is not about the writing, and I feel badly for the author/book because I doubt it’s anything remotely to do with either. I think it’s a Kindle problem or a KU problem or an Amazon problem. But massive chunks of the text in this book are highlighted yellow in the version that shows up here. Massive amounts. Not a single sentence or two. Not a pithy bit of dialogue. Paragraphs and paragraphs. But then it stops for a paragraph or a half a paragraph or two, and then it starts again. Page after page and chapter and after chapter. I spent quite a bit of time trying to solve this mystery and trying to get it to go away, and I was unsuccessful and have no idea what’s causing it. Usually if someone has highlighted something it shows up as underlines and there’s a tiny script saying how many people have highlighted it. Usually it’s a single sentence or single thought comprised of several words up to several sentences - but taken together it makes sense as to why it was highlighted. Usually there’s an option available somewhere to turn off the highlights if I wish. This is very different. It shows up as yellow. It’s covering probably more than half of the text. There’s no indication who or how many or why, and I could not find a way to turn it off. If I tried to highlight over what was highlighted, it made it turn blue, but did not otherwise change anything or offer any option for getting rid of it. To say this pulled me out of the story is overstating the obvious given all I’ve just written about my efforts to figure this out and resolve it.
I possibly could have ignored it and pushed past it except I also ran into issues with the story. Based on the blurb I wanted a story about a man whose own running dreams came to an early end, who was now coaching kids in running. And I was interested in his character development and the relationships and interactions with the kids. Except the book starts with the day our main character’s running dreams come to an end and we get to read about all of this background stuff in a lot of (randomly highlighted) detail. Skipping and skimming ahead, I eventually broke through to the jump in time and once again, we start with pages and chapters of this guy’s life before he starts coaching. And his life is predictable (based on the blurb) not particularly happy or fulfilling at this point. And to be honest, I didn’t care. I think if the blurb had been different I might have been okay with it, but none of it was the book I was expecting. So, I stopped. And it was also a relief to not deal with the random highlighting anymore.
And I’m mostly just writing this so I can remember…something. Since I don’t remember why/how the book got on my shelf to begin with, this note can’t help me with that. But it will remind me why I didn’t finish the book. Didn’t really even read very far into it and don’t really want credit for reading it - not sure how Goodreads algorithms work for DNF books.
My first problem is the highlighting. And honestly, this is not about the writing, and I feel badly for the author/book because I doubt it’s anything remotely to do with either. I think it’s a Kindle problem or a KU problem or an Amazon problem. But massive chunks of the text in this book are highlighted yellow in the version that shows up here. Massive amounts. Not a single sentence or two. Not a pithy bit of dialogue. Paragraphs and paragraphs. But then it stops for a paragraph or a half a paragraph or two, and then it starts again. Page after page and chapter and after chapter. I spent quite a bit of time trying to solve this mystery and trying to get it to go away, and I was unsuccessful and have no idea what’s causing it. Usually if someone has highlighted something it shows up as underlines and there’s a tiny script saying how many people have highlighted it. Usually it’s a single sentence or single thought comprised of several words up to several sentences - but taken together it makes sense as to why it was highlighted. Usually there’s an option available somewhere to turn off the highlights if I wish. This is very different. It shows up as yellow. It’s covering probably more than half of the text. There’s no indication who or how many or why, and I could not find a way to turn it off. If I tried to highlight over what was highlighted, it made it turn blue, but did not otherwise change anything or offer any option for getting rid of it. To say this pulled me out of the story is overstating the obvious given all I’ve just written about my efforts to figure this out and resolve it.
I possibly could have ignored it and pushed past it except I also ran into issues with the story. Based on the blurb I wanted a story about a man whose own running dreams came to an early end, who was now coaching kids in running. And I was interested in his character development and the relationships and interactions with the kids. Except the book starts with the day our main character’s running dreams come to an end and we get to read about all of this background stuff in a lot of (randomly highlighted) detail. Skipping and skimming ahead, I eventually broke through to the jump in time and once again, we start with pages and chapters of this guy’s life before he starts coaching. And his life is predictable (based on the blurb) not particularly happy or fulfilling at this point. And to be honest, I didn’t care. I think if the blurb had been different I might have been okay with it, but none of it was the book I was expecting. So, I stopped. And it was also a relief to not deal with the random highlighting anymore.
And I’m mostly just writing this so I can remember…something. Since I don’t remember why/how the book got on my shelf to begin with, this note can’t help me with that. But it will remind me why I didn’t finish the book. Didn’t really even read very far into it and don’t really want credit for reading it - not sure how Goodreads algorithms work for DNF books.
March 1, 2024
Incredible Read
This was one of the best reads I've seen. Mike Stuart creates an incredible story with wild plot twists and turns. I recommend this to everyone, whether they are a runner or not.
This was one of the best reads I've seen. Mike Stuart creates an incredible story with wild plot twists and turns. I recommend this to everyone, whether they are a runner or not.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews