I wish I had more good things to say about this book.I did love the diversity, the focus on queerness, the economic class discussions, and the powerful black female lead. Also, the discussion on sickle cell anemia was really interesting and one that I wish was explored a little more!

However, everything else fell quite flat for me. Our main character is the only character with any depth in the novel; everyone else around her is a caricature. Amanda, the love interest, reads so stereotypically queer, and it rubbed me the wrong way mostly because she has very little personality aside from talking too much and being a feminist (nothing wrong with that! I'm a feminist! I just wish there were more to her!). Gabi, the best friend, has minimal depth, but does all these horrible things to Liz, and the little depth we get is supposed to make us forgive her for being manipulative. I just couldn't...it wasn't enough. The "mean girls" are your average high school mean girl; they're popular, they're mean, they have no personality or backstory as to why they're mean aside from being rich and snooty. They also don't learn. I wish we didn't have such cookie cutter antagonists and side characters! I would have enjoyed this book so much more.


Overall, I think this is an important book, one that I hope a lot of queer, black girls read and get to enjoy. It didn't work for me, but I'm also not a high schooler anymore and lit revolving around high school experiences like prom doesn't usually work for me (although I really hoped this one would!). A lot more depth would have gone a long way.

-Book Hugger

Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to read an ARC of this! It in no way affected my review/rating.