Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay, I'm just going to start off with a minor rant: 4 stars is "I really liked it" and 5 stars is "it was amazing." I don't know about you, but in my world, "I loved it" should really go between the two. So, I'm giving this book a 4.5, but it gets rounded to 5 because that's how math works.

Does it annoy anyone else when a review declares the conclusion of a story "predictable"? I feel like every time I read Jodi Picoult, I find the conclusion predictable in that hindsight is always 20/20 sort of way. Books either end in, of course he got the girl, or of course he didn't sorts of ways, and when you read a lot all endings become predictable, but that's not really the reason for reading, in my opinion.

So what I'm getting at is, this is a very, very good book, but it is mildly predictable in that sort of way that books can be predictable when you read a lot of them. Which is not to say that the story is particularly predictable. I'm telling you all of this because I'm a little frustrated with the ending because the story didn't end the way I wanted it to. But when I thought about it, the way I wanted the story to end would have been predictable in the feel-good sort of way. And I've noticed a trend with authors lately (or maybe just in the books I've read lately) that the conclusions are not always feel-good. They're not always feel-bad, either, they're just more real life-ish.

I'm going to give up now because clearly I shouldn't write book reviews when I'm taking cold medicine, but I finished the book before I got the cold, so I can tell you with confidence that I really, really liked the book, and you should read it.


View all my reviews