eloise_bradbooks's reviews
765 reviews

Well this was utter perfection.
I didn't think it was possible to love a book more than I loved They Hate Each Other and yet... Exes & Foes is now at the top.

The ways these characters care about each other makes my heart implode with happiness I can't even explain.
I see myself in many parts of each of them, the good and the bad. And to know they find love despite the shit their parents have put them through, is all I've ever needed.

Hello Amanda Woody, you're my fave author now, thank you.

 This was an intriguing, odd but in a good way, graphic novel about a serial killer who tries to solve a murder mystery...
We're so used to seeing cities made of animal characters like cute and sweet, so seeing them in this light was a bit of a shock. A good kind of shock. That leaves you feeling unsure of what you've just read but you know you weirdly want everyone else to read it. 

 Firstly, I wanted to say thank you to Adam Hattan for sending me a copy (in a really cool box) of Hiding Him. Very cool marketing strategy ;)

Hiding Him is a British queer YA debut novel about a very out and proud gay teen falling for a very closeted gay teen.
It was a good story I got through pretty quickly and that I definitely enjoyed. However, two days after finishing it I've already forgotten most of what happened... I don't think this is one that will stick with me, but I'm sure it probably will for many other people. 

 Girl raised in an ultra-conservative Christian group comes of age, has a queer awakening and an anti-religion awakening after she meets a cute girl and picks up One Last Stop.

For some people this will probably be a loved book, as it is a very positive look on getting out of a cult.
For me, it was way too "easy".

Valerie has grown up in this cult, she's been surrounded by ideas, raised in a family and a community with these ideas, but it rarely ever comes out in her own view of the world.. She is so progressive / liberal in her opinions, you'd never know she was raised in a cult that has the opposite views than hers...
She's never heard of being queer, but she sees the word "bisexual" in a book and she knows she desperately wants to pick it up?
We're told in one phrase she goes to the library and from the following line she now knows everything about queer culture?
I just couldn't seem to get behind the story.

Also, the romance was very quick to blossom, it's love at first sight, saying I love you after very little interactions...

Anyways, probably a good plaster for people who need a positive queer book about escaping a cult, but I still think it deserved much more depth. 

 Blessings follows two POVs: Obiefuna's, a gay teenager coming of age in Nigeria, where queer relationships are on the verge of being criminalised, and his mother's, who has to deal with her son being sent away to boarding school after his father catches him with another man.
Blessings can be a very tough read, but it also feels essential that it is told and read. It is also comforting in a way, to see Obiefuna find his place with people he can trust. 

 "If joy is / revolutionary / how much ecstasy / do I need / to free Palestine?"