Great Alone Novel Kristin Hannah Reviews Summary

Writing Style

Pros:

• "Kristen Hannah is such an amazing author."
• "Every word will become a part of you and take you along on the adventure of a lifetime."
• "In true Kristin Hannah form, it's beautifully written, with gorgeous scenery & imagery."
• "Superb writing- you see every detail in this book. She writes Alaska in a way you’re scared to death to go there but you also must go there for the beauty she describes."
• "Her writing is so amazing that she pulls you in and I felt as if I were there watching everything unfold."
• "The writing flows so flawlessly across the pages that you don't realize how many pages you've flown through in any given amount of time."
• "Kristin Hannah describes the setting, the scenery, and the views in such a way as to completely transport her readers to a different time and place."

Cons:

• "Dark, depressing, humorless, with a completely unsatisfying ending."
• "The writing is Twilight level and the characters are flat, cliches."
• "Terrible writing, repetitive, and seems like fantasy almost in some of the predicaments she puts the characters in near the end."
• "It’s truly an awful, juvenile piece of writing."
• "The repetition started to really bug me."
• "The only slightly redeemable aspects are the descriptions of Alaska in the first hundred pages."
• "For me it lacks depth of character, emotion, and description."

Character Development

Pros:

• "I loved Leni. She was a strong kid and even stronger young woman."
• "For the most part I liked the characters in the book and thought she did a good job explaining why each one was the way they were."
• "Kristin does a great job showing the complexities of us humans - no one perfectly good or perfectly bad."
• "The character development in this novel was perfection!"
• "Every character is so well defined and the experiences they go through are described so well."
• "Leni is such a beautifully written character, she is so real and your heart breaks for her a million times."
• "You will love the characters and what they bring to the story."

Cons:

• "The characters were undeveloped and oversimplistic."
• "Zero of the characters were likable."
• "The character development is very poor and the way it's narrated is weird in the sense that I feel like it should have been written if first person, it probably would have flowed better."
• "I disliked the two women so much it was hard for me to continue reading."
• "This book goes on and on with unlikable characters."
• "No actual character development, just flimsy unconvincing sensationalism."
• "Her weakness made me fume."

Emotional Impact

Pros:

• "It's sad, it's real, it's gritty. It makes you feel, it made me cry."
• "I sobbed for the last 40% of this book and it was 100% worth it."
• "Gripping, moving, heartbreaking, uplifting….This book fills every emotion."
• "Your heart aches, rejoices and everything in between."
• "I smiled, I was terrified, I cried, I held my breath...you name it."
• "Gives you such deep emotions. This book is a tearjerker."
• "I felt so many emotions reading The Great Alone and the ending almost had me ugly crying."

Cons:

• "I don’t care for books that make me fume."
• "Now to shake off the depressed feeling it left me with."
• "It's literally the most depressing book I've ever read and I couldn't finish it."
• "THE most depressing thing I have ever read----finally just skimmed the last 50 pages because I couldn't take it anymore-just kept getting worse."
• "I just couldn’t enjoy this book at all."
• "I’m busy. I don’t care for books that make me fume."
• "I detested the powerlessness of the characters and their penchant for making repeated missteps."

Setting & Descriptions

Pros:

• "Such rich and well written contrasts of the incredible beauty and harshness of Alaska."
• "It opened my eyes to the Beauty of Alaska and the Beast it can be for the unwary and even the wary."
• "Throughout the entire book Alaska shines as a bright beacon even on the darkest of times."
• "Hannah writes with much detail and describes Alaska beautifully, however it becomes very repetitive."
• "Great imagery of Alaska."
• "The Alaskan wilderness described by Hannah sounds absolutely stunning."
• "You will fall in love with this area. The descriptions are beautiful."

Cons:

• "The chapters seemed to drag on forever about how Alaska is cold and it stays dark for months."
• "It was painful to see my beautiful home butchered so."
• "I appreciate the descriptions of Alaska but honestly they're a little cliche if you've been there and know."
• "Because of the abuse, it made me not want to see Alaska - even though it seems to be portrayed as some magnificent place."
• "Why is there a laundromat in a town of about 30 people and how does it operate with no electricity?"
• "I know for certain I wouldn't have lasted more than five minutes living in the woods - the size of the mosquitos alone would have had me running for the hills."
• "This book goes on and on with unlikable characters."