competencefantasy's Reviews (912)

His expressions are the best thing. I laugh aloud and giggle reading this and that is odd for me

Still cute. Still got the best expressions

Touches some very heavy topics. Not sure if the plotting 100 percent works but the art is gorgeous. Warning for some historical slur usage.

Please understand that a post disaster story written before I was born has never exceeded three stars for me before. But this one had richer theme than just people are terrible and loads of well handled intergenerational issues. Richly imaginative funny powerful thrilling ...

I also recommend the audio especially if your inner voice doesn't act well in dialect because the gorgeous prose deserves nothing but the best delivery.

It's a good choice of retelling but I think I just may not be straight enough to enjoy this... idk?

So, I love what this was trying to do thematically. I'm not sure if it succeeded at it though with me. There was a lot of sex, which isn't itself a problem but I had difficulty keeping the characters straight because they were all having so much sex. Interesting countercultural sex in some cases... but it was a problem for me. Part of me thinks that since the timeline blending was deliberate that the effect might have been intentional but it came across less linked and liminal than fuzzy and homogenized.

the other trigger for me is ...

there's a plotline about a professor sleeping with the student she is advising. And yes I know she's of age, depiction not endorsement, etc. I'm a woman in love with a woman older than me myself, I'm no prude. But teacher student is a hard hard no for me and there was no way to avoid it in this book because there is no way to tell what the book is about without reading it.

I really enjoyed this book, despite having no real sense of who Janet Mock was. She has an excellent storytelling voice. The one ambivalence I had was with the "I know now" short sections explaining the events after the fact. I understand they were necessary to orientate readers who weren't familiar with trans, trauma, or sex work topics. And most of it really was 101 level stuff. On the other hand, to me some of it gave the impression that she was claiming her current self has things, especially her motivations, figured out almost infinitely well now. Then she juxtaposes it with criticism of her previous actions and attitudes. That may well be her experience, and she should absolutely write an honest bio, but I am also evaluating it as an aspirational book and as someone whose traumatic, family, and sexuality experiences have grown more dissonant with time, who is trying to live with my past self without overwriting or pathologizing her... I found some of those sections... I don't know... stressful... deflating. I mean I would be really horrified if when I went to write my memoirs I regretted my decision to not give my parents enough of a chance.

My other complaint... I wish the book hadn't ended when it did. I still want to find out about whatever it is she's famous for (I guess editor and activist?)

Cute for what it is.

Really good stuff. Have the law and order experience from the point of view of the defendant. And then realize this is closer to reality than you want it to be.

It is hard for ... someone like me... to read the ending to this