PositiveMichigan Daily\"\'Bad Boy\' — if readers survive its horror — is a fantastic story. No matter how despicable the scenario, Roupenian leaves questions unanswered and tempts the reader onward, a choice that few will be able to turn down ... While the writing of [some] stories maintains their quality, the structure falls flat. The endings jump away from the central plot they maintained for their first half, almost as though Roupenian ran out of ideas and scribbled in some gasp-worthy ending so that the middle stories matched the rest of the collection ... But between \'Cat Person\' and the eight other sensations in You Know You Want This, the collection is easily forgivable for these lapses ... You Know You Want This navigates the desire to hurt and be hurt, the realm of lust, infatuation, harassment and, yes, the politics of being a mother of a pre-teen. And it is remarkable.\
Sally Rooney
RaveThe Michigan DailyNormal People is Rooney’s follow up to the equally popular Conversations with Friends, and her elegance continues to defy standards. Rooney’s novel is a story about contemporary love and companionship to its gut, though not love in the sense of archaic Austen or young and modern John Green. Rooney sculpts her own breed of intimate story ... It sounds terribly stereotypical, and maybe even more stereotypical to say, \'this version is different,\' but it really is. Even from its inception, the story is carefully written. It is not penned to target a teen audience or rework an intimate love story. It is merely about two absolutely mundane characters that Rooney knows with a sacred intimacy and to whom she is allowing us access ... Rooney’s storytelling is unique because it refuses the use of any avoidable images and verbosity — the text of Normal People is raw, left only with its familiar dialogue and straightforward chronical of action ... Rather than revealing long passages of character thought or detail, Rooney sticks to basics and simply moves through the story. The characters become deeply identifiable to readers, not because of one explicit similarity to life, but rather from the lack thereof — Rooney’s writing pares the writing to its very bones, making character development moldable to more experiences ... When all is finished, Normal People speaks in the gentle voices of its characters but is overwhelming with its realistic extremity. Rooney offers one of the best depictions of 21st century love yet — its fleetingness, its complexity and its publicity. It is a devastating and hopeless and thrilling depiction.
