DNF at 35%

I’ve been trying to read this book since 2017. I read the first 20% and gave up in December because I couldn’t connect with any of the characters. I’d been interested in their story based on the blurb but found I didn’t care what happened to them once I started to get to know them. I hate that because I can usually connect with pretty much anything; if a character I like has an emotional connection to a blanket I’ll probably ugly cry if something happens to that blanket.

Since my first attempt I’ve gone back to this book many times and never made it much further. Thinking that surely some time and distance from it would change my mind I’ve tried again. I’m now stuck at 35% and I’m done trying to make this work.

My point of no return was when the main character wakes to a knife in their face and the person holding the knife explaining why:

“Well, when you grabbed that boy and tried to lift him off his feet, that made me feel a certain way. The type of way that makes you feel really, really good inside. So, me not knowing who you were, I wanted to get a better look at you. And let alone, my luck, my chance occurred. You walked right up to me trying to grab some bread. That was when I decided it was meant to be.”

That was when I finally decided that, try as I might, this is never going to be the book for me. I start every book planning on shouting about its brilliance from the rooftops and it always hurts when that’s not the case. I hope other readers do find the connections that I failed to.

Thank you to NetGalley and Clovercroft Publishing for the opportunity to read this book. I’m sorry it wasn’t for me.

‘Us People’ started as a new, and refreshing, perspective of the life of homeless people, their lifestyles, their struggles and how – despite many may think – human they are. It takes a closer look at the hardships they experience to live, sleep and eat, and the discrimination they experience from the wider society. By telling the story from the perspective from a once, and still relatively, “normal” nineteen-year-old boy it emphasizes the similarities between them and everyone else is humanity itself.

The story is an illustration of how the main character, Sam, although times are often tough, finds solace in a lifestyle that was saving him from a fate he never wanted, from demons he wanted to escape from. With his guardian, Cam, you get a clear understanding of how society works on both sides of the fence. He explains most things to Sam while imploring him to refer to themselves as “us people” to show the reader how dehumanizing the term “homeless” is. The author laces many issues and themes that forces you to think of the next man or woman you see on the street and really consider the person they are and the situation they’re in.

There’s a lot of things I liked about this book like the hostile yet endearing dynamic relationship between Sam and Cam. I also liked the way the inner workings of the homeless community were presented without coming off as direct exposition. There were some problems I had with the writing that did make reading some passages uncomfortable. Otherwise, I think it’s a story worthy of being read.