content warnings: depictions of depression and hypomania, ableism, homophobia, racism, sexism, perverted/rapey comments, shaming of someone for getting an abortion, emotional cheating
representation: black bisexual jewish main character, jewish side character with bipolar disorder, black jewish side character, jewish side character, biracial (korean-black) deaf side character, latina pansexual side character, lesbian side characters, side f/f relationships, main and side interracial relationships


“Bi, queer… it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re happy. Just make sure you don’t let anyone tell you what you are. People can be real assholes about labels.”


I want to start this off with saying that I liked this book. A 3.5 is by no means a bad rating; I just didn't love this book.

Little and Lion follows Suzette who is coming home for the summer from the boarding school she was sent to after her brother, Lionel, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As she tries to return to normalcy and get used to being at home, her brother's mental health starts to deteriorate again and Suzette must try to help him while also struggling with her personal life.

This is such an important story in so many ways. Suzette is black and bisexual, and she is part of an interracial Jewish family; she and her mum are both black, whereas Lionel and her step-dad, Saul, are white, and Suzette and her mother converted to Judaism when they got married. There are several side LGBTQ+ characters, such as Suzette's lesbian best friend, DeeDee, and pansexual prospective love interest, Rafaela. Suzette's other prospective love interest, Emil, is biracial (black-Korean) and has an illness which caused him to lose his hearing and he now needs hearing aids. And, of course, Lionel has bipolar disorder.

Lionel's mental illness is explored so much in this book and I really enjoyed it. The book has flashbacks to key points in his diagnosis, as well as showing him initially being misdiagnosed as having ADHD. Lionel also talks about how the word "crazy" makes him feel, how his medication changing makes him feel like a lab rat, the way that peoples' differing reactions effect him, etc. 

But, this book is told from Suzette's perspective and I loved seeing her react to her brother's mental illness and how much she cared about his well being. Easily my favourite part of this book was their relationship, and that is the biggest aspect of the book - the title is even a reference to their nicknames for one another.

The rest of the book, however, was just okay. The love triangle Suzette finds herself in was extremely messy and undeveloped, so I wasn't really rooting for her to be with either one. There is also a massive amount of emotional cheating, toeing the line into just straight-up cheating in some cases, and I wish it hadn't been done with a bisexual protagonist who is figuring out her sexuality. 

The synopsis is also extremely misleading, mostly in how it frames Rafaela as someone who is bad for Lionel. That confused me a lot while reading because she really isn't. Lionel makes an objectively terrible decision to do with his mental illness before he even meets Rafaela, and the minute she figures out that he's genuinely at risk of hurting himself she immediately stops going along with what he does. I think that was just added into the synopsis to ramp up the drama but all it did was make me an extremely confused reader.

I did really enjoy this book and I hope I can get my hands on a copy of Brandy Colbert's newest book soon because I really enjoyed her writing and characters.