Book Reviews

FIND ME BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN // spoiler-free book review: was a sequel necessary? ft. fave ships

And welcome to another episode of Ruby trying to keep up to date with book reviews and post them on time. Tis a fun time.

Go me?

Anywayssss… I FINALLY read Call Me By Your Name is this year, after ADORING the film and watching and crying over it 508287422 times. We already know I make bad choices. It’s fine. I’m fine.

Moving on, let’s just get into this review!!

Title: Find Me
Series: Call Me By Your Name book #2
Author: André Aciman
Page count: 260
Date published: 29 October 2019
Genre: Adult fiction

Synopsis:

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever.

Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.

STAR RATING (3.5 out of 5 stars):

Huge thanks to Jonathan Ball Publishers for sending an early finished copy of this book my way! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Where do we begin with this book? *insert meme of a brain going blank*

Random side-note: as I started writing this a song from the movie soundtrack on my playlist started playing. The universe is sending me SIGNALS FOLKS!!!

Okay back to the book. You may be looking at that rating and being like WHAT?! Well. It’s not at all bad, I’ve been trying to be a lot more critical and to stop rating books so highly even if I did enjoy them. I’ve actually gone back and adjusted a whole bunch of previous ratings on GR. Anyways, enough babbling about useless information you probably don’t even care about. I just had this gut feeling to give this book 3.5 stars.

Miscellaneous unnecessary film thoughts:

Have I talked about the film? I’d actually like to a whole blog post dedicated because I just,,, films shouldn’t be that beautiful. Like it’s a sin. They’re not allowed. Story-time, I actually didn’t want to read the book at first, because I did like the movie upon the first watch but wasn’t in love. Until some time later when I couldn’t NOT because I was so impressed and curious. Moral of the story: a full post chatting about the film should be coming at some point. Hopefully soon but I’m not making any promises. Welp.

The book was just as beautiful as the film, it was so well-adapted. Like aghhh. Anyways, let’s actually chat about the sequel! Did we need a sequel? Was it worth it? Here’s to trying to answer all those questions.

The actual book:

Because I read the first book not too long ago, and even though I KNOW it was written ages ago, it really did have a whole different vibe. First off, the writing was different. It’s still lovely but it wasn’t as lyrical and beautiful as it was in CMBYN. Which I totally understand because André’s writing would’ve changed over the years. It still had that like philosophical undertone as in the first book (like monologues, etc.) but it did have a whole different feel.

The book is essentially told in four parts, spread across four different time periods about a few of the character’s lives. Basically a life update. It’s quite quick and choppy, so short. I actually (semi) buddy-read this book with one of closest friends Aamir and he described as almost like a bunch of ‘novellas’ which I totally agree with.

Part one of Find Me is centred around Elio’s father Samuel, about 15 years after the events of CMBYN, who’s on a train to go and visit in Elio. He meets a younger woman, Miranda, on the train and they have a romance. The second part is about Elio (yay!!) who also has a romantic endeavour with an older man named Michel. And part three is about Oliver. That’s… all I want to say.

I will say straight up that although I didn’t hate the first two parts of the book, I much preferred the last two. Ahh I still don’t want to say too much so I’ll guess I have to be that person and be mysterious *evil laughter*

I’m trying not to, like, compare it to the first book but it’s so difficult to obviously not bring it up. The narrative was different, the book is about adults and we’re no longer in the head of a horny seventeen-year-old boy. Which was… interesting. As I said, I didn’t dislike this book, it’s just different. WHY ARE FEELINGS SO HARD?!?!?

Also, I LOVE the ship name Olio!! I literally kept mixing up their names and found out that Olio was there’s. Maybe I’m not so dumb after all…

me trying to describe my feelings

  • Samuel: I have MIXED FEELINGS. Being in this man’s head was an experience tbh, he’s interesting but to be really frank I didn’t care too much about the storyline. I didn’t really vibe with his romance. It felt kinda flat?? Like it was fine but like??
  • Miranda: I really disliked her, I don’t know why but her character was just so bland. It’s why I didn’t connect with Samuel’s storyline is because I didn’t really like his love interest. Their romance is weird and just not my cup of tea. Also if you’ve read the book, there’s a scene that was not great (TW for incest). If you know YOU KNOW.
  • Michel: his story was also an experience. You know I may be biased but I honestly only really care about two characters, whom you can probably guess. So like I did enjoy part two that has him in it but mainly because of Elio. Are you actually surprised? Not really.
  • Elio: this little lost soul I SWEAR. The baby’s all grown up, which you can definitely tell because he has a very different voice. I still love him to bits. A forever bby.
  • Oliver: I’m going to tell you straight up that he is in the book and that he’s also quickly become one of my favourite characters. I LOVED his section, the two of us didn’t vibe for a little bit in CMBYN but it’s fine. It was just a rough patch, we didn’t have great first impressions. But BOY now!! *melts into a puddle*

MINOR SPOILERS BUT NOT REALLY

The ending i.e. the final two parts. YES!! Hands down my favourites. I LOVED them. The title!!! FITS SO PERFECTLY!! I am IN THE FEELS. SO GOOD!!!

me @ elio and oliver

“Some people may be brokenhearted not because they’ve been hurt but because they’ve never found someone who mattered enough to hurt them.”

“Each of us is like a moon that shows only a few facets to earth, but never its full sphere. Most of us never meet those who’ll understand our full rounded self. I show people only that sliver of me I think they’ll grasp.”

“Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”

“Perhaps he’d seen that sometimes it’s best to stop things when they’re perfect rather than race on and watch them sour.”

“Aren’t those the absolute worst scenarios: the things that might have happened but never did and might still happen though we’ve given up hoping they could.”

“The more we know someone, the more we shut the doors between us, not the other way around.”

“I’ve taught you how to earmark moments where time stops, but these moments mean very little unless they’re echoed in someone you love. Otherwise they stay in you and either fester all through your life or, if you’re lucky — and very few are — you’re able to pass them on in something called art, in your case music.”

“We haven’t spoken in ages, and I don’t know that we’re friends, though I’m sure we will always be. He’s always read me extremely well, and I have a feeling that he suspects that if I never write it’s not because I don’t care but because a part of me still does and always will, just as I know he still cares, which is why he too never writes. And knowing this is good enough for me.”

“So much time had passed, so many years, and who knew how many of them might turn out to have been the wasted years that, unbeknownst to us, end up making us better people.”

“He knew that if neither of us sought out the other it was only because we had never really parted and that, regardless of where we were, who we were with, and whatever stood in our way, all he needed when the time was right was simply to come and find me.”

To answer the question of whether or not this book was necessary: It wasn’t a waste of time. It was great catching up. But it still remains separate from Call Me By Your Name and doesn’t do anything to that beloved story.

Am I over Olio yet? No, no I am not.

I just constantly have to live in pain. I’m okay. Really.

Send help


HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? OR JUST THE FIRST ONE? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FILM YET? PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

xo

 

 

 

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