forevermorepages's Reviews (811)

tbh, I'm still kind of confused about some things and I definitely preferred the first book, but this was still a lot of fun and a good, if not predictable, conclusion! def recommend :)

-Book Hugger

maybe a 4.5 if I actually did half-star ratings...

ultimately I really loved this, but it was also depressing and some parts didn't interest me as much as others.

full review to come :)

That wasn't without flaws, but it was a beautiful story and one I'm glad to have read!

I'm not going to do a really long blog review for this one, but since I received it from Netgalley, I'll sprinkle some thoughts here.

I really loved the first half, but found the transition from it to the second was a little rushed, maybe forced. The second half wasn't as interesting until the whole family was reunited at the end and then it made me tear up just a little.

This isn't the cute and sweet story I had hoped for. It's incredibly hard to read at times, especially during the graphic rape scene, and with the ultimate falling apart of their family. However, it's a beautiful story of forgiveness and love and family (blood or not) that I think is quite important. It's raw and real and I really appreciated that.

Moreover, it's also incredibly well-written. Everything feels so authentic and real and I know part of that comes from the author's personal experiences with a "second home," but also probably from innate writing skills.

But anyway, I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

-Book Hugger

I received an ARC of this from the publisher and NetGalley. This is no way impacted my review.

Wow...I wasn't expecting that ending...and I'm really hoping

Orso and Gregor are still alive because I'm SAD

. But goodness, I love this series so much. I don't know that I fully comprehended what happened at the end so I might have to go back and reread it to get a better grasp of it. But damn.

-Book Hugger

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.

Reading this was one of the best decisions I've ever made, holy crap

-Book Hugger

This is one of those reviews that I think really needs a note at the top. I love this book and I probably still would if I read it, but I think it's quite important to acknowledge that Rainbow Rowell is very problematic and that her LGBT+ representation in this book is quite flawed. Being bi myself, I am disappointed at her inability to use the "b" word to describe Simon's sexuality, making it seem like he can only be either gay or straight.

Also the sequel is awful, 10/10 don't recommend continuing.
--

“You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I'd wake up every morning and think, 'This will end in flames.'”

I went into this book knowing how much I love Rainbow Rowell, knowing this is sort-of a take on Harry Potter, knowing everybody and their mom thought it was boring for the first 100+ pages. I finished it realizing that I had complete misconceptions of what it would be like.

1-It was unlike any Rainbow Rowell book I have ever read, except for the amount of kissing and romantic lines. Though, the main difference here is that those kisses and those romantic lines were said in a fantasy setting. FANTASY, GUYS. I have come to the conclusion that Rainbow Rowell can write any genre. I would read her take on a phonebook because, let's be real here, it'd be hilarious and she'd somehow make it shippable.

2-Sure, it is like Harry Potter, because essentially, this is the fan-fiction (I think?) Cath was writing in Fangirl. The book she based her fan-fiction on comes across very similar to Harry Potter, so I really was expecting a knock-off. What I wasn't expecting was a book drastically different from Harry Potter in that there are more vampires, a completely different sort-of villain, and a magic system that doesn't really resemble the Wizarding World's at all. I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe consider this a retelling of Harry Potter, given I'm 90% sure she was inspired by it (The other 10% is a safety net if I'm wrong here).

3-It was not boring. Not at all. Every second was a roller coaster I never wanted to get off. The first fifty pages are definitely an info-dump, but I didn't actually find it a boring one. Rowell's prose isn't flowery in the slightest. That means that I am not trudging through her words. The plot is simple; the writing is simple--everything I need in a book to keep the plot moving quickly.

“You have to pretend you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can't carry on at all.”

I have a few small quibbles, but they aren't large enough for the rating to go from four to five. First, it seemed like Rowell was smashing a very long story into a box not large enough for it. That usually doesn't work. This could have been expanded into a trilogy or in the least, a duology.

Second, the spell system was just plain weird. It would have been more realistic if the spells were in Latin or at least pretty. However, I felt like Rowell just sat down to her computer and didn't put any effort whatsoever into creating the phrases.

Third, there's one thing that cannot be fixed by expanding this book: the fact that it started out too late in the story. The whole info-dump in the first fifty pages? Yeah, that's about the page seven or so years Simon and Baz spent at this school together. That can't really be fixed unless she really did copy Harry Potter and made it a seven book series. Though, my complaints about this faded once I got to the rest of the book...

So it may sound like I'm complaining here, but THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING. I couldn't put it down. Honestly, I think I carried it around with me at school that day in my arms. I finished it during my history class and could not stop grinning. One of my friends literally said, "I want a guy to look at me how she looks at her books". I was really proud of myself at that moment. God, this book though. THIS BOOK. It destroyed me, but in a good way? I don't know how to describe it. It ended so perfectly and I was just sitting there like, "I NEED MORE". Painfully, I remind the world that there is no more. No sequel. No life after this. It ended. Excuse me while I cry over a book I finished a month and a half ago. Yes, that seriously is how late I am at writing this review. I am crying over that as well.

Anyway, go read this book. There are so many mixed reviews and qualms about the plot being boring, but you might be an outlier like me! You might love the whole entire thing! Maybe the little small things won't even bother you! So give it a try!

-Book Hugger
For more reviews like this, check out my blog at http://www.bookhuggerreviews.com

This was...better than I anticipated! Not going to do a long full review because I’m not sure I have enough thoughts for that. I definitely recommend it for fans of Radio Silence, although with that said, Radio Silence impacted me more emotionally...

I’m going to end with my two favorite quotes:


“Yeah, don’t you think that’s how high school works? You go through it with your head up your ass, making judgments about people you don’t even know, but if you can get out of your own way and make room for the people you weren’t expecting, then everything finally clicks.” She shook her head, and the smile slipped from her face. “It takes forever to find your people, and then as soon as you do, you graduate and head to different colleges. You lose each other right when you’re getting to the good stuff.”

“And I think being friends with someone should be like the concept of infinity—like you truly believe that person has no limits, and you just want to keep counting upward with them to see where they go.”

-Book Hugger

I think I enjoyed this book a lot more than the average reviewer on here. Most reviews I've seen have been pretty mediocre, but I honestly really liked this book. It's a heavy story, filled with internalized homophobia and external homophobia and people struggling day to day with the innate truths of themselves, but it's also hopeful and a story about strength in numbers and the power of friendship.

I struggled to see this as a thriller, which I'm pretty sure it was marketed as, for a few reasons. The first is that if this is a thriller, then its use of character's sexuality as plot-twists is a bit problematic (but this is an #ownvoices author, so I'll let it slide) and even if that's not problematic, those are pretty weak plot twists. The second is that I wasn't thrilled. Many reviews suggested that this is a hard book to get through because of the conversion therapy setting and how thrilling the plot line there is and I didn't get that. I was disturbed by the conversion therapy, but everything felt so much more emotional and mental than it ever did physical, which is why I never felt "scared." I'm not sure if this is a failure of the author so much as a failure of marketing. I think if I'd market it as anything close to a thriller, I'd say it's The Maze Runner meets Cameron Post.

I think some readers may have an issue with the cheating storyline, but it personally didn't bother me like it usually would. The relationship is nuanced and understanding and I honestly didn't even like Ario to begin with

and was quite grateful when Connor gave Ario a piece of his mind about being forced out of the closet at the end

.

Despite it not being a thriller to me, I really enjoyed the hard topics this book discussed and the friendships between the characters. Conversion therapy is not an easy topic to read about, but I think Adam Sass handled it well. I felt so much pain reading this for all the people who have to live in such unsupportive homes. And I hope that they find their way out of them like Connor did.

I think my few issues with this book chalk down to characterization: I would have loved to know the side characters better, especially Molly and Darcy, because their backstories are brushed aside. With a little more time developing the side characters, this book could be excellent.

Anyway, I think the thing I love most about this book is it's honesty. It's hard to be queer. It's hard to be a queer Christian. It never shamed Christianity, though. It never said that all Christians are like the reverend, but it did say that sometimes homophobes are gay and are struggling and gave us the nuance to understand that evil isn't always cishet. But I appreciated its honesty, even if it's a difficult pill to swallow that the world around us is still painfully horrible to LGBT+ people.

-Book Hugger

I am so grateful to have received an E-ARC via Netgalley. I may be reviewing it after the publication date, but I am nonetheless so honored to have been able to receive a copy. 

There's something so wonderful about this book that's difficult to put into words. Julia Drake is a debut author, yet this book seems like one produced by a weathered author. It reads so personally, like Violet is telling this story after the fact really, not like it's someone dictating her story for her.

I'll be honest, stories where a girl who does something stupid and is sent to live with her estranged relative in some beach town is a concept that is both tired and tedious to me. However, this flips most of the tropes expected of this story on its head. The boy she meets so suddenly and "cutely"? Not her love-interest. The uncle she's estranged from? Not so difficult for her to get to know. The family who sent her away? Not so unsympathetic. 

I felt so much for Violet, even if I have never been anywhere near her shoes. She is grappling with her brother's suicide attempt by not speaking with him and by pushing her family away. She is grappling with her own irresponsible behavior (yet the narrative never shames her for being relatively promiscuous the year prior) and embarrassment. She is faced with her own demons and comes out stronger and I just love her so much. She reads so realistically, like she could walk up to me right now and ask me if I loved her story. (I did.)

The side characters have so much depth, but the focus is on Liv and Orion. Liv's family situation was delicately handled. Orion's heartbreak was palpable. I wanted to wrap them both up in my arms and hold them.

Violet's brother, while I cannot speak for the mental illness representation, was beautifully written. And her love for him so wonderful, even if mostly unsaid.

I love that Drake showed so much more than told us this story. There were wonderful poignant lines that told so much more than if we had been spoon-fed the important details. I just...I love her writing. I will probably read everything she writes in the future just because of this. 

This isn't a happy story. While it has happy bits, it's a heavy novel about a family falling apart (and coming back together) because of a suicide attempt and mental health problems. It's about finding yourself and your family, but coming to terms with the fact that searching for answers won't always solve your problems; the past will always stay past. 

I hope everyone reading this decides to pick up this novel. You will not regret it, I don't believe. 

-Book Hugger

I received an E-ARC of this book from Disney Hyperion via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This has in no way impacted my review or rating of this novel.