Leaving this without a rating! I found a lot of value in it and I liked returning to Jacqueline Woodson’s work for the first time in eight years, but I also can’t bring myself to give it a high rating.

Impeccable writing that was easy to breeze through, even if there were some flaws in the pacing. The messiness of teenage identity was depicted with care. I liked Staggerlee as a character, and found her a believable teenage protagonist. But I can’t recommend this book because I can’t accept how the entire queer pining plot was between Staggerlee and her adoptive cousin. And with semi-frequent reminders of them being part of the same family tree! I’m sure if they were related by blood, more reviews would be talking about it, but there’s surprisingly little comment/criticism?

It’s kind of like how watching Sweet Blue Flowers was for me(carefully handled queer rep that was technically ahead of its time, I just can’t ethically recommend it), but instead of the cousin thing being at the beginning and the main character falls in love with a classmate of hers, the order was switched. 

I’m still checking out Jacqueline Woodson’s other works, but this one was weird for me.