Anatomy – A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
The Gist
Okay, so I have been absent from the book review world for a long time. Well, it feels long to me. With last year being the crap cherry on the crap sundae, I couldn’t focus on anything but making it through 2023 with that little shred of sanity intact.
About halfway through last year, my insomnia took a lovely and intense turn for the worst, and I changed my entire sleep hygiene in an attempt to fall asleep before 4 am. This included making it a habit to read before bed to calm down that busy monkey mind of mine. Enter my reawakened determination to read. I have been working myself through my to-read list ever since.
Now that we are all caught up, let’s start with my first book review of 2024:
The Details
Reading at night is supposed to help me calm down and usually that’s what it does. But occasionally (most of this year already) my selection of reading material has been duds. I mean it’s been a massive book slump for me. How is one supposed to get a good night’s sleep when one reads things that gets one all worked up. And not in a good way?
I’m sitting here scratching my slightly greasy hair on a Sunday morning – before breakfast, I might add – wondering what the heck I just read.
The more I think about it, the more agitated I’m getting. Did the author do any research or just take whatever fit into her story and make up the rest? There are so many inaccuracies and “artistic freedoms” used, my head is spinning.
The timeline was nonexistent. There were flashbacks, flashforwards and possibly even a flash sideways! A course to become a doctor is only three months long. We skip over most of it, there is more tell than show, and suddenly, we are back at the beginning. Huh???
Honestly, I have no idea what was going on. The first half of the story was kind of boring. The second half had a lot of stuff happening in a lets-throw-things-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks attitude.
The prologue, which really intrigued me felt more like click-bait, since that part of the story wasn’t mentioned again until the second half of the story and not really in a major way. At least that’s what it felt like since it was all but forgotten.
This book was messy, unorganized, unfocused, confusing to follow, and not one character was worth sticking it out.
I feel like this review is just as messy as the story.
The Verdict
Overall, I have to say that this was not worth my time. My head feels fuzzy from making sense of this story. This might come as a shock, but I would not recommend Anatomy – A Love Story and clearly, this is an unpopular opinion.
