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eloise_bradbooks 's review for:
Only on the Weekends
by Dean Atta
2.5 ~ I'm quite torn with this one...
On one hand, I'm happy to see a book cover a realistic cast of imperfect characters and relationships. In YA books so far, especially books about queer black people, we've rarely read about characters this "real" in the sense that they're young, figuring things out, and making a lot of mistakes along the way, sometimes being particularly toxic.
There is all kinds of rep from the trans white guy, to the black gay MC who questions polyamory (though underdeveloped), a black gay love interest absolutely in love with the MC but not ready to be out (loved seeing how you can love someone while knowing the relationship you have can't work), a group of friends who can be loveable at times while remaining homophobic on certain issues (not touched on enough), an interesting and pretty realistic father/son conflict where the dad tries his best for his son but his son only sees the negativity that comes from it...
The issue with this is that it can become a great point of frustration for readers who are clearly reading hurtful things and seeing relationships being or becoming quite bad and hurtful themselves. It is difficult to care for the characters, to get behind the relationships, when it's clear that they're not right and that characters are doing hurtful things and they aren't being addressed enough.
And it's frustrating when the main relationship that you get more and more invested in is the one which stops, and another relationship which felt underdeveloped, rushed, "I love you after spending a few hours with you" type of rushed, is the one who gets a happy turnout.
As readers we can't grab onto that and care for their happy get-together...
I think that these issues, which could be overlooked to some extent, were accentuated by the writing style.
The phrases are very short, very matter-of-fact, chapters end very quickly and abruptly. It feels like there is so much to cover that there is little time to spend on anything.
There were so many great ideas and important topics, and yet we didn't really get to delve deep into any of them.
And I'm a little disappointed because The Black Flamingo was one of my favourite books of 2020. I loved the writing style for that story, I loved hearing Dean Atta read it himself. It was extremely poetic.
But this story, told this way, just didn't quite work for me.
On one hand, I'm happy to see a book cover a realistic cast of imperfect characters and relationships. In YA books so far, especially books about queer black people, we've rarely read about characters this "real" in the sense that they're young, figuring things out, and making a lot of mistakes along the way, sometimes being particularly toxic.
There is all kinds of rep from the trans white guy, to the black gay MC who questions polyamory (though underdeveloped), a black gay love interest absolutely in love with the MC but not ready to be out (loved seeing how you can love someone while knowing the relationship you have can't work), a group of friends who can be loveable at times while remaining homophobic on certain issues (not touched on enough), an interesting and pretty realistic father/son conflict where the dad tries his best for his son but his son only sees the negativity that comes from it...
The issue with this is that it can become a great point of frustration for readers who are clearly reading hurtful things and seeing relationships being or becoming quite bad and hurtful themselves. It is difficult to care for the characters, to get behind the relationships, when it's clear that they're not right and that characters are doing hurtful things and they aren't being addressed enough.
And it's frustrating when the main relationship that you get more and more invested in is the one which stops, and another relationship which felt underdeveloped, rushed, "I love you after spending a few hours with you" type of rushed, is the one who gets a happy turnout.
As readers we can't grab onto that and care for their happy get-together...
I think that these issues, which could be overlooked to some extent, were accentuated by the writing style.
The phrases are very short, very matter-of-fact, chapters end very quickly and abruptly. It feels like there is so much to cover that there is little time to spend on anything.
There were so many great ideas and important topics, and yet we didn't really get to delve deep into any of them.
And I'm a little disappointed because The Black Flamingo was one of my favourite books of 2020. I loved the writing style for that story, I loved hearing Dean Atta read it himself. It was extremely poetic.
But this story, told this way, just didn't quite work for me.