Review also posted to my blog.


Feminist Lit Feb: an #ownvoices book about an experience other than your own, a book by a female/non-binary/genderfluid black author


content warnings: abortion, parental abandonment, smoking weed, underage drinking, racism, slut-shaming, grey-area cheating
representation: black protagonist, black main and side characters, biracial main character, f/f minor relationship


“I don’t want you to become another statistic.”

“Why do people never say anything about statistics to white kids. [...] Black kids don’t even get a chance to think about doing something wrong before everyone’s telling us how vital it is that we don’t mess up.”


I’m really surprised that this book isn’t getting very much hype?? Because guys, it should be! I read what is probably Brandy Colbert’s most popular book, Little & Lion, last year and I enjoyed it, though not as much as a lot of other people. This one though, I loved this one.

The synopsis is a bit misleading, so I would recommend if you’re interested just don’t read it. The most you need to know is that this is about Yvonne, a black girl in her senior year who has fallen out of love with the violin, the only thing she is good at. She is also caught in a love triangle between Warren, the guy who works at her father’s restaurant who she’s known for ages, and Omar, a street performer who she instantly has a connection with.

I absolutely loved Yvonne as a protagonist. There are a lot of people who won’t because she definitely makes some iffy decisions and justifies it to herself, and I completely understand not supporting her decisions, but for some reason I really connected with her. I feel like majority of YA contemporaries focus on teenagers who are a few years out from graduation, and I really appreciated a book that highlights the struggles of essentially decided your entire future at age eighteen.

The core theme of this book is passion. Yvonne has lost all her passion for playing the violin; she plays because that’s what she’s always done as opposed to her actually enjoying playing it. Her entire life she’s been working towards becoming a violin player because what else would she do? I love the journey that she goes on as she realises what she can do with her skill for the violin, as well as her developing another passion with baking.

I also loved Yvonne’s relationship with her dad. Her mum abandoned them when Yvonne was young, and it’s been her and her dad for most of her life. She barely sees him, though, because he’s a successful restaurant owner who needs to always be high to get through the day. Their relationship is, as you would imagine, a very distant one, but as the book goes on things happen that lead to them reaching out to each other more, and I really enjoyed seeing their slow development towards having a closer relationship.

The other characters, honestly, did very little for me. While I didn’t actively hate it, I also wasn’t very invested in Yvonne’s love life. I appreciated her relationship with her best friend, especially the discussions of sex and sex positivity that came from it, but similarly, I just didn’t feel much for it. I did, however, like that Brandy Colbert portrayed how messy relationships can be. Yvonne isn’t dating either of the guys she’s with and none of them have said they can’t be with other people, but there are grey areas there, and it only gets more complicated in the latter third of the book.

Finally, I loved the discussions of being black in this book. It discusses the fact that black person don’t really have any room to screw up without getting a negative label slapped on them forever, how much harder black people have to work to achieve things that white people don’t have to work for at all, and, particularly with Warren, it discusses being biracial. There’s a part where a piece is written about Warren and his career, and he’s angry that there was never any mention of him being black. He’s white-passing and has grown up with his mum, who’s black, after his dad, who’s white, left when he was young. The book looks at the complexities of identities and living with certain assumptions placed on you, and I loved it.

My biggest complaint would be how short it is. I listened to this on audiobook and it was only just 6 hours long, which made it easy to read but also made it feel like there was so much left to be explored. I like that the ending is somewhat open-ended (some things are resolved, some things aren’t) but some parts of the book felt somewhat lackluster.

If you enjoy a YA contemporary that focuses on some deeper issues, such as race, the future, messy relationships, and the complexities of sex, or if you’re a fan of other books by Brandy Colbert, then I would recommend you check this out.