I loved it despite how bleak it was. Personally, I'm over the multiple narrator format that seems to be most fiction novels these days. It feels disjointed to me and takes me out of the story. I get what you're saying about it ending abruptly and the slowness of the plot. But that is perfectly appropriate for the messaging and what you're supposed to get out of the book. It is a "day in the life of" type of format. We're seeing a snapshot of a person's life, which feels more real to me, in this case, than a beginning-middle-end type of story.

I'll tell you one thing. The part about her daughter being taken away and her never finding out what happened to her was the hardest part of this book for me to digest. And I read this before having a daughter of my own. I don't think I would get through it if I tried to read it again.

I won't watch the tv show for a few reasons.

• I don't want it to confuse my remembrance of the book.
• I can barely read about rape. I definitely can't watch it.
• I refuse to support the Church of Scientology in any way, including consuming media with Scientologist celebrities in them.

That said, everyone has their own taste and there are plenty of super popular books that I hated. There are also heavily maligned books that I love. It's perfectly ok to not like A Handmaid's Tale.

PS: Would anyone agree that A Handmaid's Tale has a similar atmospheric feel to Never Let Me Go? Unlike AHT, I could never decide whether I liked that book or not.