‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’

Guest Post by Natalie Hess.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness is a dystopian story told in quite a strange way. It follows the main character Todd Hewitt as he lives in a place called Prentisstown where all women have been wiped out by a disease which has caused all the men and boys to hear each other’s thoughts. This portrays a very chaotic life for all of these people because there is never a time when they have the luxury of hearing silence, until Todd comes across a girl. That’s all I’m going say about the plot of the story because I don’t want to give anything away, but the way the story was written was really cool.

Patrick Ness did a really good job of giving Todd a lot of personality with his thoughts. It’s also surprisingly easy to differentiate between Todd’s thoughts and the thoughts of others, despite how chaotic and messy the combination of all of those seem. Throughout the story, I really loved seeing Todd having to decide who to trust and transition from always being told what to do to having to make major decisions on his own without much help at all.

I listened to this novel as an audiobook and I did get a tiny bit lost in a couple places, but I think that was more my fault for not being able to focus than the book’s fault for being confusing. Overall, I gave this book four stars and if you’re on the fence about whether or not to pick it up, you should totally go for it!

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Candlewick Press, May 2008.

Reviewer bio: I’m Natalie Hess and I’m simply a high school student who LOVES reading everything from scifi to romance to nonfiction and everything in between. I also love sharing my thoughts and I hope you enjoy!

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