Review: When I Was Invisible

When I Was Invisible by Dorothy Koomson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Was I pleased to finish this book?!!! It has to be one of the worst books I've read this year, and it was a complete and utter slog to get through.

On paper, I should have loved it, because it featured lots of things that I like to read about-ballet, nuns and celebrity lifestyles, but what I found so annoying was the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the year, the location and the person in the story.

The two main characters are both called Veronica Harper who meet at school aged 8 years old...one is Roni and the other calls herself Nika, and they soon become best friends, sharing a love of ballet, and it is at their ballet lessons, that a wedge appears that will change the course of both their lives forever.

I think I would have loved this book if it hadn't kept leaping around, one chapter went from 1988 to 2012 to 2016 and covered Birmingham, London and Brighton.

If you can read this book in one or two sittings, or around a pool or on the beach then it will probably all make sense, however, if you dip in and out of the book, on a commute into work, or just before bed, you will need to remember which character is being described, and what part of the story you're on.

I am so relieved its over, and had I not been recommended this book by a friend who read it on holiday, then I would have thrown in across the room after the third chapter, but I didn't, I saw it through to the end and it's two weeks of my life I won't get back.

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