"The Book of Love" by Kelly Link
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve been an admirer of Kelly Link’s short fiction for a long time, so I was eager to read her new novel, The Book of Love. This book follows three teenagers who’ve recently come back from the dead. They have a chance to stay in the living world…but not all of them. Who stays and who goes will be determined by their performance in a series of challenges. But there’s more to this game than meets the eye, and the stakes may be even higher than the kids understand.
As one might expect from the title, love is a central theme of this book. I really appreciated that romantic love isn’t the only variety of that emotion featured. The love between (grand)parents and (grand)children, the often complicated love between siblings, and the love shared by platonic friends, all get their time in the spotlight.
I did feel like the pace of the book was a bit slow. Kelly Link is a master of atmosphere, and her shorter works, like “The Specialist’s Hat” and “Two Houses” are full of an eeriness that makes me think about them even years after I first read them. It’s hard to maintain that kind of dreamlike atmosphere over a length of 600 pages. Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing what Link does next.