Living With B

At Welton Academy, Todd Anderson and his friends are suffocating under tradition, discipline, and the crushing weight of expectation—until their new English professor, John Keating, blows into their lives with one radical idea: make your lives extraordinary. Suddenly, poetry isn’t just words on a page—it’s rebellion, freedom, and a spark of self-expression the boys have never dared to touch. Inspired, they revive the Dead Poets Society, sneaking into caves and shadows to read verse and dream of bigger lives. But passion and defiance come with a price, and as the boys push back against the rules that bind them, they learn that claiming individuality in a world that demands conformity can be as dangerous as it is liberating.

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My Thoughts

Truth be told, I went in completely blind and without doing my research. That’s usually how I like to read, but honestly? It screws me over again and again.

Kind of like ‘Atmosphere‘ by Taylor Jenkins Reid, I missed some key little words. This wasn’t “A Love Story.” Nope, it was “Based on the movie.”

Let me understand this, based on the movie? As in… someone just took the movie and put it in book form? That was my mistake, because I assumed the movie came from a book, not the other way around. Still, I stuck with it. I was already 10% in, it felt fine, and I figured I’d keep going.

But honestly? I should’ve DNF’d it. The guilt hit me though, because I wanted to love it so bad.

And to be honest, I can’t compare it to the movie. I haven’t watched it yet. I plan to, but I’m not ready for the heartbreak that’s coming.

The plot was… there. Buried under a whole lot of nothing. I was bored. None of the inciting events grabbed me, everything just felt very… meh. Like: Neil wants to do theatre, his dad says no. The boys want to restart The Dead Poets Society, but it has to be secret. They get caught, people snitch, and… you get the picture. It just went through the motions instead of making me feel anything. Even when a character takes his own life, which normally wrecks me, I felt nothing.

Characterization? Not good. It read like the author just plucked surface-level traits from the movie and plopped them into the book with zero depth. One-dimensional, flat, hard to relate to.

And the writing? Yikes. Not just “eh, this isn’t great, but I can roll with it.” No, it’s bad. Choppy, stiff, no flow—and just boring.

Last thing, not about the book itself, but the fanbase. The cult following is ruthless. Nasty, even. I originally gave this a 3-star because I saw how they tore into reviewers who gave it a 1 and offered real (though harsh) critiques. But I changed my rating because honestly, what are they going to do? Come for me too? Tell me I don’t know anything? Ooh, I’m so scared!

Do I Recommend ‘The Dead Poets Society‘?

Hard pass. Unless you’re checking classics off a bucket list or just want bragging rights, don’t waste your time. Watch the movie instead, it at least has the emotional punch this book thinks it has (or so I’ve heard).

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