Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

People, people, people, why didn’t you make me read this book earlier? What, you did, you say? Oh right, my bad then…

Okay, okay, so I totally pinched my intro to this review from Chris’ review of the same book! But the sentiment stands!

This is everything a book should be, great concept, even better characters, constantly challenging and subverting your expectations, and it really should be called The Book of Never Letting Go, because once you start it is almost impossible to put down!

So, if you haven’t been around certain people on twitter recently, then you may not know what the book is about, so without me giving anything away (and believe me, you don’t want me to give anything away!) here is a brief synopsis.

Todd, is a thirteen-year-old boy, living in a small settlement called Prentisstown, in a place called New World. He’s the last ‘boy’ in his town (all the women, either disappeared or died not long after his birth). The tradition of his town, is that boys become men on their fourteenth birthday, and Todd is living a lonely experience as he waits out the final few weeks until his birthday.

A lonely experience that is, apart from the fact, that Todd (and indeed) every man in the village can hear the thoughts of every other man in the town. Every man. All the time. There is no escape from the ‘Noise’. Anywhere.

Apart from when, Todd out on an errand for Ben (one of his father figures) collecting some apples from an orchard just outside the town, he comes across something that should not exist. A quiet place, somewhere the ‘Noise’ does not penetrate.

And now, Todd and his dog Manchee, while not knowing why, must run for their lives. The town has been lying to Todd all his life, and will do anything to stop him from leaving.

And from this point on, every time you think you know what’s going on, Patrick Ness, drops another bombshell and before you can recover, changes up a gear and like Todd, you can rarely stop, to think, to work things out, you can only run.

I talked earlier about the characters, and they are nearly all excellent; we might only meet some of them for a few pages, or even for most of the book off the page, but they all leave an impression. Whether they are the characters that help Todd out or truly evil ones out to get him, you will scream, curse, or want to thank them!

Without saying too much, there is a sense of dread that permeates throughout the book, and it’s a sense of dread that is well placed. But that is all this reviewer is going to say about that

Easily one of my favourite reads of the year.

[rating:5/5]

Other Reviews to Consider

• Things Mean a Lot
• Stuff as Dreams are Made on
• Regular Rumination
• books i done read
• The Zen Leaf
• Becky’s Book Reviews
• Presenting Lenore
• Jenny’s Books
• Nothing of Importance
• YA Reads
• The Page Flipper
• Serendipity

Buy, The Knife of Never Letting Go from The Book Depostiory.

If you are a lover of both the Young Adult & Dystopian genres, then consider joining my new reading challenge, the YA Dystopian Reading Challenge.