I received The Inconceivable Life of Quinn* by Marianna Baer as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.
A sense of magic in an otherwise normal world was… strange. Especially since it arrived at a fairly late part of the book. Although I enjoy fantasy books filled with magic, this book didn’t seem to need it. I think The Inconceivable Life of Quinn is much more about our society than anything else. The magic seemed to remove the credibility and the substance of what the book was really about.
There were religious undertones shown in both a good and bad light. Baer hasn’t shown any bias towards or against the Christian faith here, she’s just wrote about different types of people within the faith. She also talked about the media a lot, and that there’s a lot of rumours and word twisting which can, to an extent, demonize people. I really liked that the book had a strong point to the story being told.
The book was slow, and the one question of ‘Who’s the father?’ was the one thing that kept my interest. But, this answer was never given, which I’m assuming is one of the points of the book. The abrupt ending was also extremely odd as you dont quite know what to think. I’m also assuming that this is to again, link it towards the points the story is trying to make. You dont always know what to think when reading something.
Also, I personally disliked the different POV chapters. Although it was useful to find out more about the outside world, it didn’t particularly help the story. The one I particular disliked, was Sam, the male religious fanatic. He had no actual bearing on the story, and removing his POV wouldn’t have affected anything.
I would say The Inconceivable Life of Quinn is definitely worth reading, but it does take some time to really get into the story.
