Abandoned by Booklikes

Since I know most people will either have read or watched the movie revolving around this book, I will not focus too much on the summary. Instead, I will just give my overall opinion of what worked for me and did not.

The character of Oskar initially was a little hard to take. He is being bullied and you as a reader feel some sympathy for him. But then we start to realize how dark his thoughts have turned, and yikes. I started to see which way the wind blew with him. I could see why in the end that he and Eli would be perfect for one another.

Eli I felt sympathy for once you heard her backstory. But when you see what she does in order to survive my sympathy stopped in its tracks. I know I should not be okay with "bad" characters coming to a bad end in a book, but I am. The innocent (Virginia) or the people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time (the young boy, the next door neighbor) I felt terrible for and of course my mind goes back to who came before them.

The character of Hakan was disturbing. I felt uneasy anytime any chapter focused on him, and when we got further and further into this character that uneasiness turned to flat out disgust. I wonder now what happened for Eli to say that Hakan was an acceptable substitute out there for her considering she knew Hakan's proclivities.

I think if the book had just focused on Oskar, Eli, and Hakan it would have worked for me more. Instead the book jumps around a lot to different characters. I got why the author chose to do that since everyone in this book does play some small part in the ending. However, there felt like there was so much "stuff" that could have been cut back to make the book smoother.

The writing was definitely descriptive. A few times I could even feel myself becoming sick. There is one particular scene when I had to stop reading, and go and sniff some lavender because I thought I could smell burning flesh. That's the problem sometimes with having an overactive imagination.

I am also curious why the author decided to changed gender pronouns after a certain reveal. I thought based on what the character said, it would have been better to leave it at what it was before. Then the gender pronoun switched back towards the end so I really don't know what the author was going for there.

However, the flow was not that great to me just because the book felt slightly bloated. I was glad to see some backstory on the characters of Virgini and Lacke, but after a while, I started to go oh lovely them again.

The setting of Sweden in 1981 seems dark and bleak. It's not just dark because it is winter when this story takes place. But it is dark because you get to see a different side to the place with the pedophilia that is taking place.

The ending to me was bittersweet. As readers we know that Eli does not need money. Eli wants friendship, companionship, love, and Hakan cannot give that to her. Hakan wants to posses her and keep her only to himself.

I included some spoilers below to discuss in more details things that I wish had been expanded upon in the book and other things that did not make a lot of sense to me which ultimately is why I gave the book four stars. Please note that the spoiler tags discuss rape and pedophilia and the ending of the book so skip over if you don't want to read.


So I was very confused about why Eli was castrated. She made it seem like it was due to a ritual in order to become a vampire. However, we then see that Virginia and Hakan are turned after being bitten by Eli. So was Eli castrated for the man in the bad wig's own sick pleasure? I wish we knew.

I don't get why Eli ever picked Hakan. We get to see it from Hakan's point of view. But I don't think if I were a vampire that has the body of a 12 year old, I would be okay with a pedophile being my "guardian". The little deals that Eli had to do in order to get Hakan to provide "food" for her sounded distasteful. Maybe though it was something that she was forced to do in the past. Once again some more backstory on Eli would have been great.

So Hakan comes back to life as a zombie and the only thought (can he even have thoughts??) is to find Eli and try to rape her? I don't know. That whole thing was so far-fetched and terrible to read. But I was confused on how he was even getting an erection and I hate the fact that I wondered could zombie/vampires get an erection.

I thought the ending was tragic in its way since either Oksar grows up loving Eli and never having her, and or he is turned to be with Eli forever. So they just keep on killing other people or Oskar goes the way of Hakan. I don't know which ending would be better. I do think that Eli loves Oskar. The scene where she (at that point Lindqvist changes the pronoun so that Eli is referred to as a him) kisses Oskar and Okar sees how Eli sees him shows that Eli did love Oskar.