The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He

 

 

 

The cover for this book is goals…its contents not so much. I found this novel to be an odd melange of confusing and simple. The characters came across as flat (little more than names on a page), the world-building, although at first promising, ultimately struck me as patchy, and the storyline and twists were just not up my street. Still, I know that quite a lot of people are looking forward to this novel so I encourage prospective readers to check out some more positive reviews, as this may as well be one of those ‘it’s not it’s me’ cases.

The novel follows two sisters, the older one, Cee, has been stranded on an island for the past three years, while the younger one, Kasey, lives in one of the few existing eco-cities and is trying to make sense of Cee’s disappearance. Climate and environmental disasters have made eco-cities refuges for humanity. Of course, not everyone is allowed entrance in eco-cities, and in spite of their utopian promises, eco-cities’ such as Kasey’s are incredibly classists (people are ‘ranked, the cities themselves have stratified structure and those who live in the lower stratums lead less privileged lifestyles than those on ‘top’). Although much of Kasey and Cee’s world remains largely unexplored we do get some details about life in their eco-city. For example, we learn that ‘holoing’ is a green alternative which allows the citizens of the eco-city to conduct ‘nonessential activities’ in the holographic mode. There is also Intraface which allows its users to capture their memories as well as apps which can ‘adjust’ a person’s serotonin levels. Kasey, who is a very logical person and who makes sense of the world around her through a scientific lens, finds herself, somewhat uncharacteristically one could say, trying to find what happened to her sister, even if she’s convinced that Cee is dead.
Meanwhile, Cee has been trying to leave the island she woke up on. She desperately wants to be reunited with Kasey, and is prepared to risk her life in her attempt to build a raft/boat that will allow her to set forth into the ocean. Cee recollects very little about her former life and seems to have entirely forgotten about the existence of the eco-city or the rest of the world. All she knows is that she has to find her sister.

Here are the problems that I had with this novel (minor-spoilers below):

→the writing itself. Cee’s sections are narrated in the 1st person, Kasey’s in the 3rd. Something switching between perspectives can enhance a story (as with Red at the Bone, Everything Here is Beautiful, The Travelers, or anything by N. K. Jemisin), but, more often than not, is unnecessary. Kasey remains remote, which is perhaps intentional, after all, the author goes above and beyond in order to emphasise how ‘cold’ and ‘detached’ and ‘Not Like Other People’ she is (it seemed weird that the possibility of her being neurodivergent was never raised or discussed considering how technologically advanced these eco-cities are—for example, if someone feels upset they can locate the source of that feeling, be it a memory or whatnot). Yet, on the other hand, being in Cee’s head didn’t do all that much for her character either. She doesn’t know a lot, her inner monologue consists mostly of what she observes (the island, the ocean, the rocks, the sand, her shack, her robot helper). When the boy arrives her mind is mostly occupied with thoughts of him. Cee’s sections also included some really purply phrases (her thoughts ‘jellify’, she feels the ‘muchness’ and ‘littleness’). Although the writing was for the most part okay, there were a few too many clichéd phrases (“Sometimes [she] felt like a stranger in her own skin”, “[she] did not belong–here or anywhere”) and even the dialogues were full of platitudes and done to death lines such as “What could we achieve, if we worked together?”
→the world-building left too much unexplored. There was so much that did not make sense or did not convince me and yet, I was supposed to just buy into it? The few half-delivered explanations we get did little in terms of answering my questions or making sense.
→the characters….Cee and Kasey are the classic YA sisters. One is attractive, charming, everyone loves her. The other is quiet, logical, not driven by her feelings but by FACTS, and she just does not ‘fit in’. I felt nothing for them, which sounds harsh, but it is the truth. They were painfully one-dimensional, and, the longer I read, the less I believed in them. Not only is this kind of dynamic old but I just did not feel that Kasey and Cee’s relationship was particularly nuanced. They also seemed to have no thoughts about their childhood, their parents (the dad is meant to be this powerful big guy but because he is 99% of the time off-page…well, he was pretty superfluous).
→insta-love, of the worst kind. The whole love storyline did not work for me. There are some dodgy scenes that would have definitely not been included if we were to reverse the characters’ genders (and I was not a fan of those scenes).
→plot…it has its twists, I will give it that. But I just could not bring myself to believe in Kasey’s arc (that they would just let her do what she wanted).
→the themes had potential but He sacrifices potentially interesting conversations/scenes that touch upon ethics & morality in favour of drama.

Sadly, the novel had very little to offer me. By the end of the novel (around the 80% mark) I was so bored and irritated by what I was reading that I ended up skim-reading the rest. There were too many lacunae (in both the world-building and storyline) and I never felt engaged by the characters or the author’s style. I was hoping for something more compelling, and yes, the comparison to Ghibli definitely feels misleading.

my rating: ★★☆☆☆

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