Absolutely loved this book!!

It was so heartwarming and the art style was beautiful. 

Enjoyable read but nothing special.

Was not into the “retelling” part of it. Anytime it went into that aspect it took me out of the book. I love retellings but am not usually a fan of when they just use the names for fun.

Sometimes the dialogue would make me cringe lol.

Was really nice seeing so many queer characters and having the main girl be fat !!!

Honestly not really sure how I feel about this one.

I do think it’s a well written book, but for some reason it really dragged for me. It took me 7 months to finish lol.

I went really back and forth with this book, I would be super engaged and flying through it and then a blog post would show up and I’d go months without reading it again.

A really enjoyable and fun read.

I loved the call backs to the original Disney film, and I thought the author did a great job matching all the characters personalities to the movie. Mulan and Shang’s relationship was done beautifully.

I will say though, this book felt more like a middle grade than a YA to me.

This book fell super flat for me. I would like to clarify that although I’m a WOC I am not black and have not had the same experiences in life (or with this book) that a black person might.

I really wanted to like it but honestly I don’t think there’s anything about the book that I really liked. No intrigue and all the plot twists were predictable. 

There’s a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. I had no reason to believe that Chiamaka is an “it girl” other than the fact that the book keeps telling me she is. I didn’t really care for any of the characters except Devon, and his story was just trauma after trauma after trauma. The side characters don’t really feel like people, just plot devices for the two main characters.

And for the marketing, nothing about this book felt like the drama of gossip girl or the expert build to a climactic plot twist like get out.

The events in the book just made me angry. I understand that is part of the point as it’s trying to show a story of two kids facing racism, but instead it just felt like unnecessary trauma over and over again. A lot of the racism in the book is extremely in your face from the very beginning, causing a lot of the characters decisions to be really frustrating. The “big reveal” wasn’t shocking or exciting and the ending wasn’t very satisfying.

Unfortunately overall it was just a disappointing read for me. I think I would’ve liked the book a lot more if I had read it when I was younger.

I really enjoyed this book! I listened to the audiobook and I think the author did a great job. 
There was some clunky writing at times but overall beautifully written. I’ve seen some people say it’s just like her other books but this is my first book I’ve read by this author so it was refreshing for me! 
I will say though once I got to around 6 and an half hours I started wondering why the book needed to be as long as it is. It brought my attention back but then the ending felt a bit rush and idealistic but I still thought the book was overall a great read.
Even though the book covers a lot of sad themes and events, for some reason it was really comforting for me while reading. As a 21 year old, it felt oddly comforting to know that everyone has struggles with knowing what they’re doing in life, even people in their 60s.
Definitely recommend!