This is a ridiculously late review but given that it seems to be a little unloved here on NetGalley I thought I'd give it a little overdue love to balance things out.

I loved this brief and gloriously odd little book. Odd in the best of ways - that is quirky without being self-consciously so. I found it to be an uplifting delight despite darkness and pain. The humour is dark but done with the lightest of touches and the elements of magical realism blend seamlessly into the fablesque coming of age tale of the titular Oscar. The theme is nicely developed and thought provoking, the writing is engaging and the ending is satisfying and heartwarming.

I loved the MC and thought he was really nicely written. Yes, he is utterly repugnant at first but amazingly my sympathy for him grew even as I found out just how awfully he'd behaved. I found his backstory really poignant. I really enjoyed his emotional journey, coming to terms with his past and his actions and his path to redemption. I also appreciated the slightly open ended conclusion and the fact that the obvious romantic resolution never came to pass.

I thought this was a well-written novel with a intriguing premise and I enjoyed it immensely.

I am a lover of all things labeled weird or strange. I have found lots of enjoyment in books that fit that mold. So, I had truly high hopes for this novel. The premise is fantastic and I was eager to see how it played out. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish this book, even after multiple tries. I wasn't invested in character, plot, anything at all. DNF @ 15%.
1 star

A Sci-Fi-Existential Bildungsroman and Romantic Fable

Someone once said that there are only so many plots in fiction, but one of the most dependable is "a stranger rides into town". Well, Oskar is an especially strange stranger, and this absurd, funny, clever, edgy tale of misery and joy is just what the eye doctor ordered.

The premise is as odd as you might suspect. Oskar is an artist who specializes in capturing misery, and he travels to a small, poor, grim, and especially miserable German town in order to immerse himself in and be inspired by its profound, and profoundly Germanic, misery. Oskar, though, has an "experience" at a here-and-then gone mystical optician's shop. It involves how the mind perceives reality and interprets misery and joy, and everything begins to change.

The entire book is built around jokes and analogies and suggested connections that all lead back to the idea of "seeing" the world. Oskar's view is blinkered, his artistic vision is limited. He sees what he wants to see. There is word play about lenses, glasses, and so on. There' an inner eye, and a running joke about conjunctivitis. Really? There are even loads of jokes about physics, observational error, and Werner Heisenberg's problems with quantum observations. On the other hand, Oskar's love interest has a lazy eye, which is maybe a joke too far, but I loved it.

The writing style is casual elegant. By that I mean it is often highly literate, but then sometimes turns to slapstick and simplistic vernacular. (That may have to do with the translation, but no matter because it works.) Every now and then we drift into the postmodern absurd with lists, and non-sequiturs, and antic stream of consciousness. The effect is both earnest and playful. As a consequence you can have dialogue that is crisp and smart and witty, and then follow that with a conversation that is perversely foolish, dense and childlike. (There is also a happy ending that may be an ironic happy ending or a happily ironic ending, or maybe an actual happy ending. It all depends on how you look at it I guess.)

So, I thought this was a showy hoot. If Wagner, (and Jim Morrison), had composed an opera based on that French movie "Amelie", and the libretto had been done by Goethe, Groucho Marx and Donald Barthelme, you might get something like this.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

The book wasn't for me, it had a fun premise but I just couldn't get into it. I liked the main character but the writing style really put me off.

I had such high hope's for this but the ending disappointed me. While it was a fine ending it seemed very rushed.
A lot of the main characters development was very rushed and felt unexplained. While I wanted to enjoy this story it failed to actively interest me.

Sadly I was disappointed in this book. But to be fair it did compare itself to Lemony Snicket's work and that means I will hold the book to a very high standard. You can't just write a ''weird'' story and say it's "Lemony Snicket-esque". That entirely misses the point of his books. 

Anyway...Right off the bat I didn't like the main character. Oskar is a massive asshole, and I know that's the point of the story, but for me a character has to have one (even if it's tiny!) redeeming quality to make me interested in a redemption arc.  Oskar didn't. He was annoyingly rude and annoying just in general. 

Then there was the plot which was confusing and oddly paced. It felt to be too slow and too fast at the same time. Oskar is given a pair of glasses that do strange things to his vision, and he's confused by them. So what? Like really why should I care about this at all? I wasn't given a reason and that left me confused. 

The writing style was also not the greatest. It jumped from the present to the past in a way that revealed the plot behind why Oskar is miserable too soon. Maybe I guess to get us to care for him but it didn't work for me.  All in all the writing style felt too simplistic for what this book was supposed to be. 

I ended up quitting this book, and after reading some reviews I'm even more glad I did. The other reviews I saw spoke of too happy endings even to the point of characters getting deus-ex-machina boyfriends. I like happy ending when they are deserved, so this book doubly would have not have been for me.   In the end I gave this book 1 star.

Unfortunately, I started this book but did not finish it. I could not get into the story or characters and chose not to complete it.

I liked it in the beginning (and it was as quirky as the blurb promises then), but proceeds to devolve into one of those sickly-sweet saccharine "everyone gets a happy ending!" ~wholesome ~ plots, that I..... am not interested in, at all, especially since I barely knew the characters and it didn't feel like any of them actually deserved it.

This has to be one of the uniquest books I have yet to read. It has been a while since a novel has made me think about life and the way we see it so thoroughly and I could not be more grateful for it.

When Oskar moves into the small village of Keinefreude to get inspiration for his new art collection, he doesn't expect his whole world view to change, but it does. As someone who has lived on the streets since age 13 before he got his break in the art world as a child prodigy, he sees life in a rather pessimistic light. He's used to using people for his own benefit to depict their sorrows and downfalls, but everything changes when he tries on new glasses which show the world in a bright heavenly light.

The book follows his journey from a rather awful human being into someone who brings joy to Keinefreude - a bleak and grim place beforehand. All in all, a quite inspirational story!

this is one weird book! a very interesting crossover that breathes life into the genre at first, but then it fell flat for me - by the end, it seemed as though the story was just tying up loose ends and making sure every character was happy. it didn't quite work.

2,5 stars, that I'll just round up to 3.

I liked it in the beginning (and it was as quirky as the blurb promises then), but then it devolves into one of those sickly-sweet saccharine "everyone gets a happy ending!" ~wholesome ~ plots, that I..... am not interested in, at all, especially since I barely knew the characters and it didn't feel like any of them actually deserved it.

For example, from the blurb: "Will it be an easy ride? Hell no." Except even the baker lady (I still can't tell all the Fraus apart) gets a deus-ex-machina random boyfriend, just so she'd have a happy ending too.

I even see the irony of my review. There's a part when Oskar talks to some TV channel cameras after a natural disaster, and the reporter tells him to act miserable and only talk about miserable stuff, "because that's what the people want to hear about" And here I am, talking about how the book was better when everyone is miserable (in the beginning) Yep. Ironic. But I'm not going to pretend to like the "Be happy!!! See the happy side!!" messgae that the book seems to promote, as positive as it is, because it's practically shoved down our throats.

I could not finish this book. It was just too boring for me.
50 pages in we get a little information about Oskar's objectives, which assumedly sets up the plot, but as far as I got, he'd only been confused by a pair of lens and annoyed some townsfolk. I didn't see the story getting any more exciting closer to where I could have managed to read more, it just seemed like this book was never going to pick up, and honestly? The plot struck me as not all that exciting?
Oskar is a quirky character, similar to Jackaby and other beloved characters alike, and I thought that I would end up really enjoying this story because of his character. But I just couldn't manage it. I hate giving up on books, but I couldn't see myself enjoying this book enough to trudge through the molasses of filler before things started picking up.

This was such a weird little story, I really liked the plot and how I wasn’t really sure where it was going and how it was going to unfold. I think what you take from this book is entirely up to the reader’s perspective but I really, really liked it. I just wished there was a bit more structure? Is that the correct term? In any case, a solid 3.5 stars rounded up to 4!

Travelling to a decrepit little town, other's call it bleak but Oskar thinks it's beautiful. He has a different out look on things, not only because he's an artist that tends to paint beautiful pictures of people's misery, but also because he's had a hard life. Living on the street since thirteen, he finally has an apartment of his own. His fridge is broken and he doesn't know how to light his wood stove, but it's his own home.

He's a very peculiar person, not many friends, and thriving on other people's suffering. He wasn't always like this, but he has always been lacking compassion. He eats kinder chocolate every day for breakfast, but he's lost his passion for painting. He can't find anything he wants to paint, and that's a problem, because the gallery that pays him for his art, is also paying for him housing. That's when everything changes.

He stumbles into a glasses shop, and though he has perfect vision, he wants decorative glasses. The man behind the counter tells him he'll give him a free pair if he takes an eye test, so why wouldn't he get his eyes checked? The man gives him a pair of tinted classes, and it changes his world. He sees everything in a completely different light, and it overwhelms him with emotions he doesn't usually feel: love and compassion.

I really enjoyed getting to know the characters in this book, they're just so different than anyone I know personally, and anyone I've read about. Oskar makes friends, and comes to terms with a lot in his life, like his absent mother, his dead father, and his old school bully. While I couldn't exactly get sucked into the book, I still enjoyed it and am glad I got the chance to read it. My favourite character was of course Oskar, or Greta. They're very different from each other.

I imagined this book to be in a black and white world, the glasses being the thing that finally showed colour to Oskar, letting him finally live his life and feel the feelings that he's always shoved down. I think if you like stories that really show the characters becoming who you want them to be, you're going to love this.

Thanks for reading!
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

A very unusual, interestingly-paced novel with a very memorable main character in Oskar. Prose was fascinating and flowed nicely. I enjoyed this book despite the plot being slightly confusing at times.

"After four years on the streets, he prided himself on his bladesharp survival skills and his ability to adapt his language and behavior to almost any social situation."

This was definitely an impulse request. my NetGalley self-control is at an all-time low. c:
That being said, I didn't necessarily dislike this, it's more like there wasn't enough substance???
The prose was beautiful and Oskar was an interesting character, but that's pretty much the only interest I had while reading this. The plot just wasn't doing it for me.

The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick is the second novel released by Hattie Holden Edmonds and, if I’m not mistaken, her first foray into the young adult scene. Oskar Dunkelblick is labeled as an “anti-hero” with an inclination to focus on the morbid, grotesque, and general darkness of the world. Oskar is a teenage artist living Berlin, making money off the paintings of human misery he creates for a local art gallery; he prides himself on his ability to be disconnected from the world and to be able to capture such raw, human elements.
But all of this changes one day when Oskar receives an eye exam. All of a sudden, Oskar can see beauty amidst the darkness (much to his chagrin) and he is forced to reflect on past and life choices. He begins to feel guilt for the first time (and a few other emotions too) as he begins to notice the world around him and his interconnectedness to others.
Overall, I would say I enjoyed The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick though it took me quite awhile to get there. As an anti-hero, Oskar isn’t the most likeable character to read. He’s crass, he’s rude, and he chooses to do horrible things to people. However, this book shows the amazing capacity human beings have for growth in empathy and understanding, using metaphors and history from eyecare and eyewear to push along this growth. We watch Oskar grow from this selfish, depraved young man into something completely different.
I had to keep in mind that this was a German book translated to English so phrasing and structure was a bit different than I’m used to when reading a young adult novel. However, I really didn’t mind after I grew accustomed to the style. I don’t know how much young adults will enjoy this book, though, considering it’s quite different. But, hey, maybe that’s what will draw readers to it as well? It’s very thought provoking and deep without treating difficult topics as “childish” issues. I think there will be a lot of respect for that in the YA community.
I would give this book 3 out of 5 Awesome Austin Points. It was good, but it wasn’t AMAZING. I would only recommend it to certain people, those that I know will enjoy it, rather than a mass recommendation. However, if you want a YA book that’s a little more philosophical and supports spiritual and personal growth, then this is going to be a book you want to look into to reading!

I'll add a link to my live post on 10/28/18.