“My road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions – or bad – it’s just my road.”

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

My Review

“You have to pretend you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can’t carry on at all.”

I know, I know. It’s been a bit since I’ve last posted a book review. But last week was a bit… eh. Anyway, I’m here now, and with a book I started reading ages ago at that.

So reading Carry On in its entirety has been a long time coming for me. Honestly, after I DNF-ed it like – three or four years ago? – yeah, I didn’t think I was ever gonna come back to it. And trust me, I gave it a good shot too – I was like 40% through the novel before I gave up!

He’s still looking in my eyes. Staring me down like he did that dragon, chin tilted and locked. “I’m not the Chosen One,” he says.

I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. “I choose you,” I say. “Simon Snow, I choose you.

But something made me want to give it another shot, so I did. And for better or worse, I’m glad about it. This was, overall, a pretty good book.

Don’t get me wrong! The first third of the novel is an absolute slog to get through – I definitely had the same problems reading it the second time that I did the first. But it was easier to get through this time ’cause I’d already read it before so I kinda… skimmed a little bit. And once the plot (finally) started to really get moving, I really enjoyed what I was reading and had a little trouble putting the book down.

I enjoyed the characters, even though most of them felt a little basic, archetype-wise. Which is probably why Penny was my favorite – she seemed to be the most interesting. I liked Simon and Baz well enough too, even though their relationship felt a little shallow. And their pining – particularly Simon’s oblivious pining, kind of got annoying. Yes Simon, why are you so obsessed with what Baz is up to, I wonder??? Most of the dialogue and character interactions were really good though.

“Do you ever not go for the lowest blow? Like, do you ever think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t say the most cruel thing just now?'”

“I’m trying to be efficient.”

The plot of Carry On was a fun riff on the Chosen One trope, not to mention all the other dark academia and magic school tropes. (And Harry Potter tropes – like, Simon and Baz share just a few similarities with Harry and Malfoy, respectively.) And I like it when authors do it – it’s fun. The twists were also pretty decent (even though Rowell isn’t shy of showing her hand full of breadcrumbs leading to them – predictably, I figured them out pretty early on, lol).

The climax and the ending were probably my favorite parts of the book, both because of how action packed they were, and because the biggest twists on the tropes were either revealed here or occurred here. The POV changes did get somewhat out of hand at this point, which was kind of distracting and annoying, with some of them only being like a sentence long. But it was mostly okay.

“People who tell you that slamming and bashing into things won’t make you feel better haven’t slammed or bashed enough.”

Anyway, I enjoyed Carry On. It gets three quarters of a star off for the 30% slog of a beginning, however, as well as an additional three quarters of a star off for smaller things that bothered me about the novel. Otherwise, I generally liked it.

As always, thank you all so much for reading, and I hope that you have an amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar

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