It’s interesting that you call it “cliché” when a lot of what you’re calling cliché came straight out of my own life and the people I grew up around. I didn’t Google addiction. I lived it. I didn’t research growing up around organized crime. I grew up around it. I didn’t invent those family dynamics because they sounded dramatic. I watched them.
Literary fiction also isn’t defined by how ornate the prose is. It’s defined by what the novel is trying to do beneath the plot. If it didn’t resonate with you, that’s completely fair. But saying it’s “just decent storytelling” without engaging with the themes, structure, or character work is a pretty surface-level critique.
The funniest part is ending by saying it deserves a place on the bestseller table after giving it 2.5 stars. That’s a contradiction I’ll happily let stand on its own.
Literary fiction also isn’t defined by how ornate the prose is. It’s defined by what the novel is trying to do beneath the plot. If it didn’t resonate with you, that’s completely fair. But saying it’s “just decent storytelling” without engaging with the themes, structure, or character work is a pretty surface-level critique.
The funniest part is ending by saying it deserves a place on the bestseller table after giving it 2.5 stars. That’s a contradiction I’ll happily let stand on its own.