When Grace lent this to me, she told me that it read like poetry. And she wasn't joking. The best word I can think of is "ethereal". Gorgeous and dreamlike, and over and done with as quickly as a favorite song. I read it in less than two hours - I can't remember the last book I read in one night. Just the thing for a night when I was feeling mopey and lonesome.

Amazing is too small a word for what I feel for this book. I love Block's way of writing. It is full of passion and music and magic. It's like the whole world is a glittery, shiny, wonderful and terrible place. Echo is a girl with issues, just like everyone else, but in a unique kind of way. She falls in and out of love, meets and looses people and wants to be loved and to be beautiful. This novel is about love - not just the romantic kind of love, but the accepting and respecting yourself-kind

I loved this book!! This author has such a way with words. It's like your listening to a song rather than reading a book. I hope to one day read every little thing out there she has ever written. SHe is definately my kind of storyteller.In ECHO, you meet a girl named ...well... ECHO. You go through her life and every chapter somehow either revolves around ECHO or is a story that will someday effect her.It's really brilliant the way it is done and the ending actually brought a tear to my eye. (no...

2.5 stars, the writing is nearly dreamly but the story is not very engaging but I don't hate this book.

And then I cried a flood of tears as if I really were a mermaid who had absorbed too much sea into herself. The tears spilled like a balm, like a potion, like a charm. In them swam a little girl whose father was dying without ever having seen her Echo, cannot be read like a typical YA novel. It reads like poetry or a dream. It's mystical and silly and heartwrending all at once. Mrs Block writes lucious, beautiful prose. This book is one to savor. Page by page. Breathing in the beautiful words

This book is about a girl named Echo. Echo has a mother who is the most beautiful thing to grace the planet. She is perfect in every way. Since she was little, Echo couldn't help but compare herself to her. She was a perfect cook, a fantastic gardener, and she had healing powers. On top of all of that, she was naturally beautiful. Since Echo knew she could never be anything like her mother, she began drinking and smoking at a young age. At the age of sixteen, she was going to night clubs. One ni...

The book started in confusion and ended in confusion. I'm not sure what it was about! Was it symbolic or meaningful? If so the symbolism was completely lost on me. Unicorns and vampires exited and entered the book on a whim and I'm not sure if this was a realistic fiction about a girl who had serious mental issues or a sci-fi or what. The book was peppered with sex, drugs, and melodrama and though the writing was beautiful the story line was definitely lacking a lot!

I finished this book on the day I started it. From the summary, it seems like an otherworldly adventure book. Upon reading it, it is discovered to be reality; seen as an otherworldly, adventurous perspective. It has many underlying themes that truly bring the book to life. The otherworldly perspective of mermaids and angels and vampires is just how Echo herself sees life.Since the book is told from many different perspectives, remembering who the characters are and how they are related to each o...

I didn't like this book too much. The back of the book made it seem like the book was all about the supernatural and this girl wanting to become a mermaid. It was really about a girl who smoked and went to clubs and slept with a million guys.

This book hits on all of the usual F. L. Block themes, but is a little less grimy/ethereal/wonderful than some of her other works. At 14 I would have loved this book just as much as Weetzie or Girl Goddess #9. However it doesn't stand up on its own merits to someone a little (haha, a lot) older with more literary experience under her belt.

This was a bad book. It was one of those books that you read because you're stuck on a plane for six hours with nothing else to do. It was wayyy to artsy. I feel like Francseca Lia Block was either trying too hard to be artsy--and as i've said before (and will say again), if you TRY to be artsy, it's not going to be artsy, just weird--or maybe she was just stuck in the convoluted inner workings of her mind that nobody wants to see. Whatever it was, this book just made me uncomfortable. I can't f...

I like the Weetzie Bat books and I Was a Teenage Fairy. I like the manner in which Block folds faerie into contemporary America, especially southern California. As for Echo, I am less certain because the book departs from my memory quickly. It is an ambitious book with its shift of perspective and time throughout. I think what works less for me is the prose. Here it has less of the quirky Valleyisms and more cloying description - of foods, of flowers, of painting, and so on. This novel aspires t...

If you particularly enjoy lyrical prose and magical realism, at some point you must read a book by Francesca Lia Block. I am probably in the minority because I would recommend Echo before the far more famous Weetzie Bat (the book of that name or the entire series, Dangerous Angels, of which Miss Weetzie is the title character.) Here's why:Block is a perfect example of a writer who begins a charmed career with raw talent and a distinctive voice and who eventually ends up trying hard to mimic her

Echo is a different kind of book, its very vague but clear at the same time(if that makes any sense). From what I've read so far, this book seems like a combination of short stories that are about people, from all different age groups who have magic powers, healing powers or are considered angels. After reading one short story I find that this book will really have you thinking and wondering about what the story is really trying to state, rather than what its literally mentioning. The first shor...

Beautiful writing, but I didn't care as much for the story itself.

Hands down one of the worst books I've read. There is virtually no plot, character development is non existent, and the jumps in point of view are awkward and difficult to follow.I disliked that their was no dialogue. It was a master class in telling not showing. The characters are flat and unlikable the whole way through. Plus, their names are Thorn, Smoke, Echo, Valentine, etc...It's supposed to be magical realism, but I'm not buying it.

Each chapter was similiar to short story to me. I found this book a little boring because usually I would read a book with a straight plot line but each chapter seems to jump into a new topic and/or place. Also, almost each chapter introduced new characters and some didn't pop up again throughout the book. The first chapter was about her mother. She related her mother to an angel that she saw as perfect. All the while, she didn't see herself as anything like her mother. Throughout the book, she

I didn't even finish it.While the prose was absolutely beautiful, I couldn't stand the glamorization of, well, everything from drug abuse to eating disorders, to feeling fragile and hopeless.I didn't like that all the characters felt that their doom and salvation was in finding a boyfriend/girlfriend. That to feel whole and human and yourself you need someone to love you desperately.I didn't like how being fragile and soft and breakable is made to sound like it's the prettiest state a girl can b...

Sadly I missed the hype on this book. The author was very much all over the place. The author truly beautifully described everything, however the actual storyline was somewhat hard to follow. I think the author had really high hopes but I'm not sure she completely pulled it off. She would spend long chapters telling the backstory on one character, then jump to a seemingly unrelated character. She did this with about 5 characters until you could finally see how they started to know each other. Ho...

I remember the day I found this book. It was my senior year, I had transferred to a new school. I barely attended, but when I did I'd hide out in the library during lunch. I picked up this book, and I couldn't stop reading, it's a fairly short book. It's a novel/short-story/poem in my eyes. Whenever I did go to school, I spent my lunches reading this book over and over. It reassured me that I was okay, it was okay to be alone, to not fit in. This book was able to connect my mind and my heart in