Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all well. Today I’m posting my review of Michael Crummey’s novel, The Innocents.

This novel was long listed for Canada Reads 2024.

The Innocents by: Michael Crummey: Evered and Ada have been orphaned as children. Left to their own devices and forced to survive the harsh realities of the world with no one to guide them but each other. They must fight stay alive through cruel winters and bouts of illness. This novel explored the good that can come from life, but also the brutality of it, too. This novel wasn’t for this reader; it started off slow, and the plot didn’t really feel like it was going anywhere. Then around the mid-mark there was an incest plot that we thought would be a one-time deal, which turned into being a thing for the whole rest of the book and this reader was just not into that. It’s understood that the way this ended was kinda like the novel coming full circle on itself, but did it really have to include an incest plot; it was a real turn off and was a tipping point for almost DNFing this. The writing was okay, Crummey did a good job of writing about the mundane life and things that happen in a small coastal town. It’s weird because as slow as things did proceed in this novel, the reader found it to be quite fast-paced once they felt a little invested, the only thing is, it took some time to get invested. The characters weren’t that great for this reader either; they never felt connected to them so they didn’t really care about them. There were moments when they would feel for Ada because she found herself in such a sticky situation. The way her story ended just felt so sad; her brother on the other hand, the reader felt sad for him too, but in a different way. They both lost so much at such a young age, that the reader empathized with them, but the path it led to was unfortunate and depressing. Even the side characters fell a little flat and didn’t really do a lot for the story. In the end, the reader did want to like this, but none of the elements added up for an enjoyable read.