kelly_virginia's Reviews (459)

“A Big Friendship can hold you when you’re worried that everything else is falling apart. It can be a space of validation when you feel alone in the world. It can provide the relief of feeling seen without having to explain yourself in too many words. And it offers the security of knowing that you won’t have to go through life’s inevitable challenges alone.”
my god, this book. it will make you want to call every person who has been important to your growth, who you met and were instantly obsessed with, who you’ve had painful friend breakups with and know they were just as bad, if not worse, than a romantic breakup.

I could not put this book down. The stories were so compelling; I was drawn into their desires - for control, for approval, for acceptance, for love. I found myself judging them sometimes and then pulling back and reminding myself that we've been brought up to fit our own sexuality into what is 'normal' and anything outside of those tight confines is abnormal or whorish or something to not discuss. It's hard to believe this was nonfiction. It forced me to confront my own sexuality and what ultimately I am searching for. It helped me empathize on a deeper level with women who approach sexuality differently than I do.

i warmed up after a few essays - maybe around “pure heroines”. at first i didn’t like the voice, and found the essays boring, nothing new or revolutionary. eventually either i got used to the voice or the essays became more interesting, or both. nothing extraordinarily remarkable, story of a generation in seven scams felt just like reading multiple wikipedia entries around different topics... but there were elements that made me felt like i knew jia, that we had crossed paths or known each other at a bar, but weren’t close friends.

a fine book for a beginning PM, but i wasn’t... inspired.

i saw some reviews saying since it was two novels put together it wasn’t great. i disagree. sure, you can tell they’re two separate works but they’re both gorgeous.