queenfury's reviews
108 reviews

I'm conflicted in how I feel about this one. I went into it expecting a powerful, painful but necessary read. But after a while, it seems like it turned into trauma porn. Absolutely nothing goes Max's way, and he is stripped of all autonomy in every decision in his life, both due to being "a pushover" who doesn't want to rock his already fragile family and as a "scientific interest." At first, I recognized this as a reflection of his intersexuality and how it didn't feel like it belonged to him, but even after

the characters went, "Gee, maybe we should let Max have control of his own body," after his mother tells the surgeons to proceed with an abortion after Max withdraws his consent, his choices in not wanting to be around his mother anymore and not reporting his rapist to the police or his parents are taken away from him yet again.

I also found the writing itself to be quite bad. The POV shifts are frequent and often unnecessary. Aside from the literal child narrator, who is overly intelligent for his age due to autism (which is never remarked upon by any character), each character has the same narrative voice with almost no distinguishing features. The characters besides Max felt bland and two-dimensional.

Ultimately, I feel like this is a book with important themes that it misses the mark on.

Content Warnings

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

"You can make your life, or life can make you. Was it really that simple of a choice? As I hit the dock's end and jumped, I wanted to see it, that change from passenger to driver, Emma to Saylor, watching to doing. So when I hit the cold lake and went under, I kept my eyes open."

Content Warnings

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queenfury's reviews 108 reviews

queenfury's reviews
108 reviews