TBR Jar Review: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock - Matthew Quick

This was the latest pick of my TBR Jar, and while it was definitely better than the last book from the jar, I definitely had mixed feelings about it. 

It is about a young boy named Leonard Peacock, who is struggling to keep it together. On his 18th birthday he decides to kill a boy from school and then himself with his grandfather’s Nazi handgun. Before he shoots though, he wants to say goodbye to the few people who matter to him. We follow him throughout the school day, as he makes his goodbyes and slowly we figure out why he wants to kill that particular boy. 

As mentioned above I have mixed feelings about this book. First of all I absolutely detest foot notes! I don’t understand how anyone can think they will enhance the reading experience. Especially when they sometimes stretch over two pages. What?? It completely disrupts my flow in reading, and just bugs me to no end. I found it a little hard to get into the story, maybe because of the foot notes, maybe because it took quite a while to figure out why Leonard wanted to kill his classmate and then himself. Once we found out why, the story picked up for me again, but then we were nearing the end. I also found the ending a bit unsatisfying. Does he have it out with his classmate, does someone figure out that he needs help, does he make it on his own? 

In the end I gave this book 2,5 stars out of 5 on Goodreads. 

It’s always a little bit tricky picking the next book out of the jar. I try to limit my book buying, so I am dependent on my library for the books to read. This time I picked “How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them - A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide” by Howard Mittelmark. It comes up during the search, but then it says no library has it…I’ve booked it anyway, but just in case, I’ve picked another books as well. That one is “We The Living” by Ayn Rand. I don’t know why, but I have always been a little intimidated by Ayn Rand. I guess we’ll see if that was justified.