I received this book through First Reads, so I should probably hurry up and review it. I'm terrible at reviewing books. I have all good intentions, but then the time comes to sit down and write all of my wonderful opinions down and I kind of lose the will to live. I need to work on that; I want to write for a living, and that's never going to happen if I can't sit down and actually write.

Anyway, on to the Cyclist.

Firstly, the reasoning behind my rating. At the start of the book, I almost thought I wouldn't make it to the end. I was planning on giving it one star. A few chapters in, and I was feeling a little happier about it, but I was still hovering at about one and a half stars. By the end, it was up to three, because the story had hooked me.

But why was I only going to rate it one star? The writing. It's as simple as that. The sentences are clunky, and mainly short. These short sentences got on my nerves, breaking up the flow of the story with too many full stops. The dialogue felt stunted and unrealistic. I know that in reality the characters would be speaking French, and that's difficult to translate into spoken English, but I did feel they could have spoken a little more naturally, and then I could have believed the characters more. And, there was way too much telling instead of showing, to the point where the characters even tell each other unnecessary information just so the reader can know it, even though we know that the characters would know it. It's hard to give the reader all of the information they need when you're writing historical fiction, but there are better ways to do it than this book demonstrated.

That aside, I did enjoy the story. There were some funny lines (one that comes to mind is 'his best friend was a Jew', so like 'but I have gay friends'), and the book did elicit a few giggles from me. The main character was interesting, and I did find myself wanting to know more about him and the way he thought. The ending tugged on my heartstrings a little, and I hadn't been expecting it. I had been expecting a Sound of Music-esque ending, and instead received a tragedy. I thought this was brilliant. The book had managed to throw at least one surprise at me (although perhaps I'm just too optimistic a person, and really should have expected the sorrow? Hmmm...) and I finished it feeling glad that I had read it, even with it's flaws.

I'm unlikely to reread this book, but I'll keep it on my shelf just in case. :) ( )