Book Review: The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

I read this book a few months ago and haven’t written a full review which is unacceptable because it was kind of an amazing book. I think the reason I haven’t gotten around to writing a full review is because the book was that good. Where do I even begin?

I guess let’s start with the description from goodreads.com and go from there?

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her “our little genius.” Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don’t like her. She jokes that she won’t bite, but they don’t laugh.

I think one of the things I liked best about this book was how little I knew going in. I loved how the story seemed to kind of unfold itself as I read. The author did a great job of giving you just as much information as she wanted you to have as the story progressed. So I don’t want to give away too much because going in blind was probably a good thing for me. If I’d known much about it – I don’t think I would have read it, so I’m glad not very much was given away initially. That said, even if you do know more about the book than I’ve mentioned, don’t let that keep you from reading it. It’s worth it, I promise.

This book was fascinating and funny and heart breaking and shocking and more. My book club read and discussed it and it lead to a good amount of discussion about a lot of different topics – always the sign of a good book. It will have you thinking about society and science and psychology and education and nature and parenting and coming of age and much more.

The characters were wonderfully fleshed out – even the characters you didn’t want to sympathize with, eventually you found yourself rooting for them – and the story lingered in my mind constantly throughout the day and probably will continue to do so for quite some time.

Have you read this book? What did you think?