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Two-Way Mirror: A Poetry Notebook

David Meltzer

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The poem is perhaps the highest verbal form of communication. It illuminates and it conceals. It is...

Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated The Favour in Books

Mar 12, 2021

The Favour

Laura Vaughan | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Book Rating

When I first started reading The Favour, I couldn’t bring myself to like the main character Ada at all. I found her to be quite whiny and wanting to be someone she wasn’t, and as the book continued I started to find myself pitying her as she tried to fit in with the group of (mostly awful) art history students while they were travelling Italy. I then grew to dislike her again as she tagged along with the group well into their adult life and being somewhat oblivious to Lorcan and Annabelle’s “generosity” being because they felt indebted to her. My mind changed again in part three, to genuinely beginning to like Ada as she finally seemed to have figured things out for herself.
The scenes that Laura Vaughn paints of Italy are beautiful, and made me want to visit the various different places that the students did to take in the sights of Italy for myself. The art that was described were so descriptive that I could almost envision them and upon looking them up I found that the pieces that were described more in depth weren’t that far off what I had imagined.
While the first two parts of the book were very descriptive (although I wished that the tour of Italy they went on was described more!) I found them to be quite slow. But when it got to the third part of the book, and the group going back to Italy, that’s when things really started to pick up in pace and get exciting. I couldn’t put the book down at all for part three! In the last 100 pages or so, so much was revealed of that fateful night that I had to go back and reread paragraphs as I was so shocked! It wasn’t until 15 pages before the end I realised what Mallory had actually seen, and the revelation of what had been happening all those years before was something I hadn’t seen coming at all! The last two pages were even more of a shock and completely turned some of the events on their head. Some amazing twists at the end of the book, which made the slow but descriptive start completely worth it. I will definitely be recommending this to anyone who asks and anyone who enjoys a good book with some unpredictable twists!
Overall, I would give this 4/5 stars!