Turns out there's a limit to The Infinite Noise

So, today I’m talking about The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen, and I have no real cutesy intro as to how I came across this book, it’s just one that popped up into my sphere and when I read the blurb I was like, “Wig, okay, I’ll read that”, and now we’re here. Also, this book came out in 2019, so I’m happy leaving spoilers in – even though all the other times I’ve left spoilers in, they’ve never been that big.

Also, because there wasn’t a warning in the front of this book, I’m going to mention it. There is brief mention of self-harm in this book.

Also also, if you want the video version of this post (CLICK HERE)

But our lovely blurb tells us that Caleb, an Atypical, was born with enhanced abilities. He feels the emotions of everyone around him but keeps getting pulled into the emotional orbit of one classmate, Adam. Adam’s feelings are big and all-consuming, but they fit together with Caleb’s feelings in a way that he’s never experienced before. In a way that feels right. So, basically, Caleb is an empath on extreme difficulty. Jokes aside, that doesn’t tell us all that much, but I imagined that something would have come from this, like maybe Caleb would try and approach Adam in some way or something. And I immediately wondered whether being an Atypical was something that the world in this book knew about, or whether it was a common thing. I immediately had questions I wanted this book to answer, which is something I don’t often get from reading a blurb.

Something I will immediately comment on is the back cover of my copy of the book. And what I want to mention is that the back cover is busy. Like, there’s a lot of text on it. Yes, there is the blurb that I wrote out above, but there’s also a section dedicated to praise about the book. And this might just be me, but I have literally never paid attention to the praise that gets written on books, I just don’t. I wish the praise section on the book would have been removed, and that the blurb had just been given pride of place, because when I first picked up the book, it did take me a moment to actually figure out which part of all the text on the back was actually the blurb.

Anyway, we’re back on our dual-POV mug. Chapter one starts out with Mr Football Man, Caleb, getting a 57 on a maths test, and nearly passing out, and then he sees someone called Moses getting bullied, so fully decks the guy who was bullying him. Then chapter two goes to the other character, Adam, who is getting bullied, and goes to hide in the library, and hears, from Moses about the fights. And then Adam refers to Caleb, in his head, as quiet, beautiful Caleb, and that’s the end of chapter two. Chapters one and two were over really quickly. They were only like three or four pages each. Then in chapter three, we pop back to Caleb, and he’s in therapy and gets diagnosed as what the blurb mentions, an Atypical. And in the context of this book, it’s pretty much someone with too much empathy, so they can feel other people’s emotions. Then basically, in therapy, Caleb’s therapist introduces him to this colour theory, or colour chart, where he can assign colours to emotions or to people, and that’s how he and Adam sort of start to get together – because Adam’s emotions are the ones in school that basically help Caleb not lose his mind.

I thought this whole colour theory thing for emotion in this book was interesting. It wasn’t something that I’ve ever seen before. I know that emotions are often associated with colour – red for anger, love, desire and blue for sadness and calmness, things like that – but I’ve never seen that concept taken so hard as it was in this book. And something that Caleb mentions himself, around the page 70 mark, was that since he spends so much time dealing with everyone else’s feelings around him, he often forgets about his own. I appreciated that Caleb was in therapy as well for a lot of the book. I know that might sound a little weird, but while he was in therapy, that’s pretty much where he learned about what was going on with him – with the whole Atypical thing – and it was like we learned about it as he did. I also appreciated that not absolutely everything about it was explained. If I’m being honest, I don’t think everything in books need to be explained, especially when it’s a book like this with a big concept. They Both Die at the End is another example, with the Death Cast. It’s one of those things that I don’t think needs a full explanation, it can just exist in the world.

Still, at the recommendation of Caleb’s therapist. The two boys start spending time together and hanging out. It starts off with them just getting lunch once a week together, but then they start actually hanging out, they get closer, and in the spoilers that I said I was happy to mention, they do end up getting together, although, their relationship does end up becoming a point of contention and conflict. I will, however, not spoil why.

I will say, there were some moments in this book that I expected to be bigger that just weren’t. Like, for example, Caleb gets asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance by this girl, Caitlin, and since Adam has this crush on Caleb, I would have thought the Sadie Hawkins dance would have been more important than it ended up being. Like when it actually happened, it just happened and that was it, we kind of just moved on with life. And that happened quite a few times, the things that I thought would be important in the book ended up not being, and vice versa.

Now, I think the book started heading in a different direction in, say, the last 25 percent. Like, a lot of technical stuff and stuff about the world comes out. I mentioned earlier in this post about how one of my questions was whether other people like Caleb, Atypicals, existed in the world, and that question does get answered, but most of the information comes in that last quarter of the book, and it made it feel a lot more scientific. So, it was like the majority of the book felt like a contemporary YA book, and then it shifted more sci-fi towards the end, and I would have liked it if the sci-fi elements would have been interwoven throughout the book. It could have even been stuff as small as Caleb going off on his own, once he finds out he's an Atypical, and finding out that other Atypicals do exist or have existed. Something so it didn’t all come so suddenly and shift the tone towards the end.

And speaking of the end, the end came very quickly. Almost too quickly. To me, it felt like Adam and Caleb were in the middle of a conversation and the author was like, “Okay, we’re done now.” Like, sure, it came at a point where closure was achieved, but I just felt like there was more conversation that could have happened in the conversation they were having. It’s not a negative per se, it was more of just an, “Oh, this is the end… Okay…”, and I wasn’t expecting it, like I was walking alone and accidentally walk into a pole. Very that.

And for one final point: Can we stop putting blatantly hetero artists and bands in queer books, please? Because at one point during this book, Adam makes Caleb a playlist, and he puts Ed Sheeran on it? Adam justifies it by saying he chose music he thought Caleb would like… but still? Was there any need to put Ed Sheeran anywhere in this book? No.

But that’s it, that was my last point. Honestly, I’d give this book the exact same review as Golden Boys that I just read: It was good, but it didn’t launch my wig off. You know, I really enjoyed the concept and Adam and Caleb’s relationship progression throughout the book. I just wish the more sci-fi stuff had been more interwoven throughout the book, rather than been laced on so heavily towards the end.

Okay, bye!