readingpicnic's Reviews (500)

I enjoyed this a lot. Very relatable journey with gender for me personally. This was very funny, and I grew to enjoy the art style (I think I waited so long to read it because the art style on the cover put me off for some reason). I was also an emo teen "tomboy" for most of middle school and high school who listened to punk and rock music, so I felt very seen by this lol.

This book kept me guessing the whole time, and I enjoyed being surprised by each new twist and turn that revealed itself as the story went on. I will say that this book was very slow for me to get through, which I think really slowed me down for the TRR unfortunately, and I considered DNFing it at certain points. It starts off really intense and then slows almost all the way down before picking back up around 70% through. However, I really enjoyed the ending of the book, so I'm glad I stuck through it ultimately. The bee horror in this book felt so creative and new, and I loved the drippy, rotten, and sweet imagery throughout. The depictions of grief were very real in this book and became all the more real after reading the author's acknowledgements section at the end. I appreciated how Caroline remained a presence throughout the whole story, even if just in the peripheral. I think that this book would make an excellent A24 horror movie honestly, going off of the trend on BookTok, as this book felt so cinematic and I could picture so much of it in my head. It reminded me a lot of both Wickerman movies, the original with its slow-paced disconcerting vibes and horror, and the remake with its bee horror. I was also reminded of Bunny a lot while reading this with the group of Honey girls, but I think this specific story hasn't been told before even though it reminded me of other horror. Overall, I enjoyed this and its explorations of gender, sexuality, and class. I think this story has so many layers to it and I wasn't necessarily patient at times with this slow method of storytelling, but I understand why it's well loved.

My god, what an incredible book! This is also the horniest book I think I’ve ever read lol. The writing was beautifully weird, the narrator was so funny and blunt, and the relationships with the main character and the women in their life were so deep and lovely.

The final scene with Jonny crying at their Kokum’s grave made me cry so much. It was such an emotional and impactful scene to have towards the end of the book to really emphasize how their relationship transcends death with their imagined conversation (or real conversation since Jonny used to see spirits). This scene hit me like a truck.

I wrote down and highlighted the fuck out of this book. I’m going to recommend this to everyone. It’s so unabashedly queer and sex positive, and I can’t wait to devour the rest of Joshua Whitehead’s books.

I really enjoyed the art style of this! I didn't read the synopsis before picking this up, and I'm pretty sure that I've seen this advertised as a book by a trans author, which isn't true since it's written by a cisgender bisexual woman whose partner is a trans woman. The story mainly focuses on the author's partner's social transition with many different groups of people and the reactions they receive in coming out. I appreciated the author's honesty with including thought processes she was going through that she feels shame and regret about now that she's looking back on her reaction to her partner coming out. On that note though, I feel like this book's primary audience is not trans people, but cis people like the author who are having someone close to them transition. I didn't not enjoy it as a trans person, but it kind of felt like a book for educating cis people on how to and how not to react to someone close to them coming out as trans since we mainly got the cis author's perspective for the whole book. I will also say that the author's humor is not for me, and I feel like she seemed too jokey about how her partner now has to experience transmisogyny and catcalling from strangers. Idk, it was an okay book.

I enjoyed this memoir and learning about the author's journey with navigating queer spaces as a trans man. I related to a lot of the author's experiences even though I'm a nonbinary lesbian, and I really liked how he talked about gender and transness as such an individual experience and that he didn't want to be a trans monolith. There were so many realizations I had about my gender while reading, like things I've done that I didn't even connect to gender dysphoria: stopping running due to gender dysphoria with the tight athletic clothes I had to wear, not liking the sound of my own voice, and more that I can't remember at the moment. This is a very raw and honest book, and I feel like I got a lot out of it. It also made me realize that I say "I identify as..." instead of "I am..." or "I exist as..." which I found to be an important distinction and something I was doing unconsciously. Also, the author provided so many resources to trans books in the back that sound great, as well as referencing trans artists and influencers that I had never heard of until now, so I'm grateful for that.

The art is very beautiful, but the story was not very good and felt very rushed. It felt like there were no actual stakes in the story and that there wasn't enough time given to developing the relationship between Blue and Hamal for me to have an emotional investment in them. 

There was a weird little time skip between the Reaper telling Hamal that he had to make up for making an imbalance of life and then suddenly he was at Blue's grave putting a plant heart in his chest with no explanation?? I was sooo confused how we got to that point or how that was the solution, and then it didn't even matter because Blue was alive again by the next page. It was like Cemetery Boys if random chapters and passages were cut out, leaving behind fractions of the story (I liked Cemetery Boys). The excuse that the Reaper brought Blue back to life because she thought they were a cute couple felt too easy and cliche, especially since the main conflict of the story was Hamal using his powers to help flowers grow, apparently causing a huge imbalance, but bringing a whole human back to life is fine? Okay. Then it felt like it was dragging quite a bit at the end just to show a scene of them being together as a human couple.

I still liked the author's mission of creating the representation that they didn't get to see as a child, and I loved the art style dearly. The full page spread where Blue was filled with plant life was my favorite. 

Very intense and thoughtful explorations of gender, sexuality, and race, particularly with biphobia and racism within the queer community. I can see the author starting to explore gender in this piece, I think pre-social transition? I saw this particularly with the constant thought that something was missing or awry in relationships that the main character couldn't put their finger on, even after they had mostly come to terms with their sexuality (enter: gender). The illustrations were incredible and connected very well to the different stories. I liked the blend of mythology with the fictional memoir-esque chapters, and this was overall a stunning book.

I love you, Miss Major. This was such a wonderful book and gave me hope for trans* futures. I adored reading about Miss Major's perspectives on the queer and trans* communities, as well as social justice needing to start from the very bottom with grassroots projects. I recognized a lot of the events and people that she mentioned from taking LGBTQIA+ classes for my WGS minor, so I feel like this book helped me build my knowledge on queer and trans* history from the perspective of someone who was there through it all. Her point about Stonewall not being an end-all-be-all was very true, and I appreciate her bluntness and honesty about how the queer community, especially the white queer community has historically ignored, harassed, and excluded the trans* community, especially trans* people of color (like literally just watch the speech that Sylvia Rivera gave at pride where she was booed off the stage by white queer people for talking about transness). Her openness about what trans* can mean is very refreshing and doesn't exclude or require explicit labels. I also love her emphasis on community and that change has to come from within the community; that they should get to make the decisions about their own lives. She has such a distinct voice that really shines through on the page, and this was overall an incredible start to my Trans* Rights Readathon.

I don't really know how I feel about this book...it has to marinate a bit more. I will say that these are some actually morally gray characters in very fucked up ways, which was fun sometimes. I think I got confused about what was happening at some points in the book, and I didn't really understand the ending, so I almost want to reread it... It did keep me guessing the whole book about what was going on, and most of my theories ended up being wrong lol. The lack of consent in this book was upsetting...I'm not sure if it was because the main characters are meant to be fucked up or if it's romanticizing the SA? Pretty fucked though. They are sooo toxic. I don't think I understood either of the main characters' motivations for the entirety of the book whic lended to my confusion. The atmosphere in this book was so incredibly well done: the oiliest, greasiest, grimiest gay book I've ever read. The body horror was also amazing, with disgusting lines like "curdled genitals" on a dead body. Also, why is Johann literally Addie LaRue? Reading this felt like reading a toxic gay anime fanfiction; like, this is what I imagine Noé and Vanitas fanfics are like from the anime The Case Study of Vanitas.

I'm not really sure what to rate this or if it's inappropriate to rate a true crime book? I didn't know much about Ed Gein, so I learned quite a bit from this, although the authors point out in the back that some of the scenes depicted are dramatized. The explorations of gender were very sad and disturbing, and I don't really know how to feel about them. What do I do with the information that Ed Gein may have been trans? This was just a lot for me honestly.