Talking at Night by Claire Daverley was published in 2023 by Penguin Books. I picked this book up because it’s been compared to One Day… but what did I think of it?
What is the book about?
Talking at Night is about Will and Rosie who meet in school as teenagers. They’re opposites in every way you can imagine. Rosie overthinks everything and she’s destined for great things while Will is her twin brother’s wild and unpredictable friend, but after a chance meeting they begin to spend time together and seem destined to have a great relationship.
Until, one day, tragedy strikes and their future together is completely shattered. As time goes on, Rosie finds herself off at university and Will stays in their hometown, but they can’t help but constantly find their way back to each other.
What did I like about it?
- I went into this expecting a story about 2 friends who fall in love as teenagers but struggle to figure out how to be together – and that’s exactly what I got.
- It’s quite a sad book and I enjoyed seeing the characters struggle in life. That sounds kind of bad but I do love books where people actually have to work to get to the places they want to be rather than just magically getting there.
- I read it because I wanted something like One Day (after reading it and watching the Netflix show) and it definitely gave those vibes! It also made me think of Normal People and Love, Rosie/Where Rainbows End.
- Sometimes books that are set over a long period of time and only about 2 different characters struggle with pacing but I didn’t feel any issues with this one.
What didn’t I like about it?
- I really didn’t feel connected to the characters at all. I feel like it’s down to the fact that we don’t really spend a lot of time with the characters over the years. A beginning of a book spends a lot of time with them as teenagers but then the time we spend with them as adults just wasn’t enough. The time jumps were quite big which meant we didn’t get a lot of time to see the characters develop. I tried not to compare it to One Day but since I literally read this because I loved One Day so much, and in One Day, the fact that we saw the characters every year for 20 years really helped us connect to the characters. I wanted to care about Will and Rosie more.
- I won’t spoil it but there’s definitely one character that you end up having more sympathy for than the other. Because of the way one of them was acting made me unsure that I even wanted them to end up together.
- This book was a lot of TELL not SHOW. I feel like we were never actually shown how these 2 characters felt about each other.
Would I recommend it to people?
- I’d recommend this book to people that are looking for something to fill the void of One Day, Normal People, or Love, Rosie.
- However, I wouldn’t recommend it to people that like a lot of character and relationship development.
Where can you buy the book?
