Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
reread :))
i wish this book was longer! i love jonas <3
this book will always make me reflect on how it is a gift to be able to feel love and happiness and how as humans we are lucky to have so much diversity to celebrate.
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
an adorable queer middle grade novel written by two queer authors who have both written several queer novels on their own!!
this book was so wholesome. i loved the diversity in both expression of gender/sexuality and other components like race & religion! the friendships developed were amazing and realistic and so were the crushes!! (totally felt abigail crushing on hot older women!)
my only issue with this book is the slightly weird pacing. there's random time skips that don't have seamless transitions, which can be annoying at times and easy to miss (especially if you're like me and your eyes tend to skim/wander a bit and you gotta reread). furthermore, this book is written in third person, and sometimes i had trouble remembering which pov i was reading when abigail and kai were in the same scene. however, it doesn't take away from the purpose and message of the story at all, and is more of a personal thing, so don't let that turn you away.
all in all, this is a book i really wish i had as a kid and i'm so happy young queer kids can have today!! i highly recommend :-)
thank you so much Algonquin Young Readers and Goodreads for the free copy!!
Thank you NetGalley for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a short, quick read told in-verse about a girl with a drug addict mom trying to find her place in the world when a boy she felt attracted to got her turned into a vampire. It wasn't bad, and I liked how the vampire hunger was treated as a drug. I liked how Shelby became better than the others. There wasn't a whole lot to it, and I think if you're looking for a quick read, this can be a good choice.
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
i'm a little late to the party, but here i am anyways!
i originally picked up this book due to similar vibes to the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid (one of my all time favorite books). it didn't end up being too similar beyond the initial premise and dual timelines, but i have no issue with that since the story ended up being vastly different then i expected.
it's a dual timeline between elise st. john, a black actress in the middle of two controversies, and the story of kitty karr, a white actress who left her estate and money to elise and her two sisters. kitty's backstory starts in the jim crow south and connects out to the st. john's lives in present time.
i enjoyed reading about kitty, and she was definitely the shining star of the book. she was also the character with the most logical reasoning skills, which made her greater than the others but everyone else more intolerable. however, given the lives of these people, it's very understandable.
my biggest issue with this book is that it feels both too long with the over descriptions and slow pacing in kitty's rise to fame yet also too short because the ending was very rushed. there was also little focus on the st. john family and they all fell flat compared to the development of kitty. while kitty is of course the main character, i just expected more because the description implies they have a bigger role. it's very similar to the way monique falls flat compared to evelyn hugo in the seven husbands of evelyn hugo. furthermore, a lot of the plot twists were pretty predictable once the book split into multiple POVs.
all in all, i enjoyed this book, but it wasn't super life changing.
thank you henry holt and goodreads for the ARC (even though the book came out earlier this month).
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
KENJI MY BELOVED i wish that was longer though :// felt very short and like barely any information was even added to the story, but bc it's kenji i love it
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
i didn't like this one as much as the first, but i've definitely developed an appreciation for how apollo/lester is developing. i love seeing characters grow!
i love him and meg's sibling relationship SO much !!