January 3, 2025

Not for sight readers

This is not a review but a warning for sight readers like me. And the 3 star rating is just 'cause a rating is required for posting a review ... It's supposed to be amazing! Sadly, I only managed 30 pages.

While it started off great, about 20 pages in the point of view shifted to a letter written by character even worse at spelling then than I am … la hija tulla bino a verme … volbio con una serbesa muy dulse … yegue tarde y les ise cafe … not actual quotes but indicative of the inverted c/s and b/v, dropped h’s and general misspellings. the phonetic readers out there will shrug, and rightly so, but lordy I’m a sight reader and these really screw with me as I have to stop and sound each word out like I'm in kindergarten … and not some random line or quick exchange but page after page after page filled with them … then the rules changed and the phonetic spelling of the cuban accent began with the odd dropped s and who knows what else ... page after page until I had to give up.

I don't know how prevalent this sort of spelling is throughout the rest of the book. Maybe someone can post saying it stops at page 37 and then only shows up again the last couple? I can hope! But what I read took too much effort, sounding out all those idiosyncratic spellings, and the prospect of a few hundred pages of constant, changing phonetic struggles makes me despair.

If you’re a sight reader like me or you’re early in the process of learning to read, be warned. That said, it really is supposed to be great and it breaks my heart just a little that I can't read it. But you're not me, the sightiest sight reader ever, so give it a try!

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