An epic conclusion - on a scale I never could have predicted - for a tale of bloody revenge, the family we forge, and self-discovery. The breath-taking poetry I so missed in Godsgrave was back in force for the finale! I love the use of echoes and line breaks which mirror Mia's own actions and reflections throughout her odyssey. Every character is flawed, but their motivations are sharp and relatable/understandable; I was thankful that the book took true-to-character risks, and had tragic consequences, while also praying that the author would be nice and offer a glimmer of hope/a happy ending.

I have to say, the meta-commentary was a /little/ pretentious. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it there. But I forgave the whole self-aware book thing, because there has been a narrator all along, and I /was/ anticipating that the storyteller would be revealed before the end.

But compliment sandwich: This book has great messages about relationships, something I do /not/ often say about YA fiction. Sometimes, you love more than one person. Sometimes, you have to choose to take a risk on someone; true love doesn't just /appear/. Sometimes, you love someone, and they don't choose you back romantically, and you have to accept and respect, but also you can show love for them in another way: by helping them achieve their goals.

Honest Feelings is the theme at the core of this conclusion: Who we become when we let rage, love, fear, greed, jealousy, anguish, empathy, rule us. The Many Are One.

My heart was in my throat the entire time I was /flying/ through this book. I love a villain with psychological depth (Hello, Norman Bates!), and I love an unreliable narrator. This book had both, in spades! I frequently caught myself yelling at the book because I was both enthralled and disgusted by the minds of Rose Gold and Patty.
I love what this book has to say about how we all have a violent, haggard, lonely little voice inside us, and the only difference between the average person and a criminal is that the criminal's inner voice has gotten out where other people can witness it.
I also love what this book has to say about motherhood, and the endless paranoia/grief/love/resentment/complex emotions which come with giving all of yourself for another.
And finally, I love the twist on the Munchhausen-by-proxy thriller, that this is a tale of what happens after, not what happened during. Creative, and just as alarming, heart-breaking and sinister.

What begins as an atmospheric, sci-fi thriller, rapidly descends into a boring, preachy, existential mess. The concept is that culture feeds our soul, we are able to feel purpose and empathy because of the rich culture we inherit and participate in, but the relics of our culture - and their significance - fade over time. Whether our memories of the importance of things fade naturally, or are censored by a political or omniscient force, is never addressed or answered in the book. And the protagonist makes no effort to thwart her memory loss, to try and relearn the importance of the objects and places around her. Bit by bit, she allows herself to fade, until she and her entire island fade from existence. It's a tragic fairytale, and a 100% Japanese cautionary tale. But after the halfway mark, it's not very /interesting/ to have a narrator do nothing... do nothing... and then give up on life...

An absolutely stellar - no pun intended XD - sci-fi horror romance... Yeah, that sounds like a peculiar mash-up, it really isn't. The fact that Kristoff and Kaufman could actually balance all the very real, very human, themes in this book is a testament to them as story-weavers. We are not worthy.

The story is about a devastating event in space, and is told as if it were a case file, through a series of documents including: emails, texts, transcripts of discussions between officers, personal diaries, summaries of surveillance footage, even the ship's A.I.'s log. I will admit, this is a very rare case where a physical book makes for better reading than an ebook. I began with a digital library copy, and couldn't get through the mechanics: The font was too small, the images took forever to load, and all the while you're trying to read around redactions and strike-throughs... But once I got my hands on a physical copy, the whole "files" mechanic felt more real, it was much easier to immerse myself, and read at my pace... I devoured the book in three days XD. It's an astounding piece of artistry, the way K&K convey cinematic developments - fighter pilots scrambling, ships exploding, a person bouncing along without gravity - with the size, and shade, and /curvature/ of the text! This book comes to life in a way few sci-fi novels do; it is mesmerizing.

This book is an abject horror. Name a trigger, it’s in here. Name a writing mechanic failure, it’s in here. Vulgar, sloppy, and mean-spirited, this book has nothing of merit. If you want to read a literary drama which highlights society’s willing complacencies and shortfalls, and the catastrophic effects of ignoring a poorer or otherwise marginalized community, look elsewhere. Please, look elsewhere; many authors have tackled classism, systemic racism, bullying, marital disfunctions, drug abuse, sexual predators - all with wit, artistry, and heart. JKR has all the finesse of a tabloid writer daring you to look away from a lurid photo.

Breakdown below. Spoilers and trigger warnings ahead.

The Themes: Let me state up front that I am not a prudish reader. That the themes in this book are, at times, sickeningly mature, is not my criticism. For example, the abuse and neglect of a three year old boy – a victim in an abusive cycle which goes back at least as far as his grandfather - is heart-breaking, and realistic, and difficult to read about but deserving of an audience and a discussion. That right there, and how the family’s small, working-poor community doesn’t have enough significant, reliable help from social programs or city council members – in short, how a lack of opportunities feeds into the cycles of addiction and abuse - is a book in itself. If JKR wanted to highlight a need for social reform - an investment, on our part, into our communities – she could have strictly told the story of the Weedons.
Instead, JKR’s intent seems to be much shallower: To show that despite how someone may appear on the surface, underneath all human beings are selfish, disgusting animals, prone to giving more weight to perceived problems (i.e. gossip, delusions, internal monologues, reputations, etc.) than actual, physical problems. To that end, she equalizes every character’s representation in the book. There is no protagonist/antagonist, everyone is morally dark grey (leaving the reader disinterested in or appalled by most everyone), and they are all given equal amounts of representation in the books. What JKR has done is she’s fostered a “Good People on Both Sides” in book form, essentially equating the following problems:
- An unhappy wife is having a midlife crisis and wants to go to a concert to oggle hot boys.
- A meth addict – who turned to drugs after her father raped her repeatedly for years, and who turned to prostitution to pay for addiction – is in danger of losing the only thing she loves, her youngest children.
- A townie wants to vote for the closure of an addiction clinic on the outskirts of town, because the urban population offends him.
- A third-generation immigrant is teased at school – not for her ethnicity, but for her body shape – so she cuts herself and has suicidal thoughts.
- A father brutally abuses – physically and verbally – his wife and two sons, and a neighbor on at least one occasion.
- A cowardly man shys away from breaking up with his girlfriend, while courting a widow.
There are more, but do you feel the imbalance? These are all problems the characters are going through, certainly. But these conflicts are not equal. That sounds heartless; I know, in the real world everybody’s problems are real and all-consuming for them and their sphere, and nobody deserves to be shamed for feeling what they feel… But in fiction, we get to pick and choose our conflicts! We get to focus our writing on making a statement about abuse, about marital strife, about cyber-bullying. We don’t need to make a conflict sandwich of every grievance in town, because in so-doing you set up the false equivalency that all grievances have equal gravity. A woman wanting excitement in her life does not face the same consequences as a woman who will likely get punched in the face if she laughs too loudly. The problem is not whether these conflicts deserve attention, it is whether they all deserve attention at the same time, the “Black Lives Matter” versus the “All Lives Matter”. I argue that no, no they don’t; each family in this book could have been its own book. Or its own section, until the finale, where the reader can see how their self-absorption led to the catastrophic deaths of two/three people. But in flitting around a large cast, hearing their individual hardships side-by-side, JKR tried to do too much, spread the narrative too wide and too thin, and the book essentially complains for 500 pages, the end.

The Structure: Let’s talk about those 500 pages, shall we? This book is a classic case of failure to “Show, Don’t Tell”. JKR used omniscient narration, telling the audience every single character’s thoughts and feelings, only occasionally using a vague phrase like The Secret, so that she could reveal what she had withheld later in the story. You know that saying about, “If you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke”?… This book would have been WORLDS stronger if it had been third person, and JKR had trusted the readers to read between the lines of dialogue and body language, at the hostilities beneath. Let me say that again for the people in the back: Trust. Your. Readers! There is a scene, about halfway through the book, which is almost good: Five people are having dinner, and everyone gets mad at everyone for a variety of reasons. Political opinions, jealousies, toxic relationships – all comes to a head as the wine flows, and people begin to argue. This would have been a great moment for the reader to come to understand how the characters are related to each other, how deeply some feelings have festered, and what their true natures are under stress… But JKR undermined her own efforts, by cutting aside in the narration to explain every barb, what inspired it in the moment, what fueled it years past… Cut. It. Out. Far too much given/written, when the same points could have been made by writing less.
Similarly, the first 240 pages are completely pointless, they are one, long, Dramatis Personae introduction. There is a chapter for each character’s reaction to the news that Barry Fairbrother has died, and further chapters on the history of Pagford and Yarvil. You know where that all comes to a head? 240 pages in, at the funeral for Barry. Through dialogue, and body language, we could have seen which characters hold disdain for others, how folks are related, who is most effected by Barry’s passing, who acts magnanimous versus who is actually sympathetic, etc. The funeral should have been the start of the book, all the central characters would have been there and easily introduced, Krystal Weedon made notable by her absence.
Earlier I mentioned that the book suffers from false equivalencies, made worse by the omniscient narrator. One restructuring of this book that could have made it more inviting is the Choose Your Own Adventure format. Imagine, if instead of a paranormal adventure, the reader were plunged into the gruesome truths and evils of a modern suburb. Imagine if, after leaving the funeral, you could pick and choose which characters’ arcs to follow, and see – in a mimicry of real life – their small part in the whole, and how it effects the finale. Imagine if, through successive rereads, you got a picture of Pagford as a whole, and were able to see how each citizen, in their own way, effected its evolution/degeneration? The omniscience would be there, but in a way which rewards the reader for reading, instead of barraging them with information like a student at a lecture. And it would alleviate the conflict/tonal inconsistencies, by allowing the reader to pick one story line at a time.

Vulgarity versus Art: This book is full of disgusting passages: the thoughts of sexual predators, racial slurs, body-shaming, bodily functions, etc. That’s sort of the point, JKR seems to want to remind everyone that nobody’s farts smell like roses. My issue is that the rest of the text ought to set the tone. Here is an example: We are told that Simon Price routinely takes his stress out on his family. That is entirely the problem, we are told. We are told why Simon is feeling stressed, we are told what all his warning signs are, we are told he has hurt his family in the past, we are told he is about to hurt his family in the present, and then the omniscient narrator keeps right on telling us how next door someone is making tea. Instead, the text could have set the tension for the scene: Light stabbed through the blinds. We see Simon slam the door as his wife hollers, “How was work?” from the kitchen. Simon steps on a small toy that snaps, a shard of plastic tearing a hole through his sock (mimicking the shards of the stolen TV which will be the fuel for his stress and outbursts later in the book). Simon chucks the pieces in the bin before yelling his displeasure at his kid; it’s not immediately apparent that he’s more than a frustrated parent. Over the course of dinner, Simon makes disparaging remarks about the food, or his kids’ postures, “attacking” what’s on his plate with gusto. We see his wife try to change the subject to something chipper several times, to no avail. Down the street, a tea kettle whistles… In a seemingly mundane scene, without explanation of who Simon is and what his relationship with his family is like, the text nevertheless puts the threat of violence in the back of the reader’s mind. An eventual outburst from Simon, and his wife’s total lack of control over the situation, would be earned.
Ambiance and careful word choice are what elevate a work of fiction into a work of literature. JKR’s drama is considerably weakened by the decision to blurt out crass details, instead of building and revealing the crassness of a character over time.

Offense: I have been a literary critic up until this point: themes, story structure, tone… But this book is also personally offensive. It is classist, sizeist, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist, xenophobic, and the list goes on. Sometimes, I think we were meant to understand that the character is prejudiced, not the author. But more often it felt like JKR was unveiling her own personal biases. The language around body type is particularly upsetting. Curvy people appear in this book as one of two things: glutinous or sexually promiscuous (even predatory). Dumpy, pudgy, porcine, dull, overflowing, unattractive – all used to describe characters with curves. (Yes, “unattractive”, and “attractive” is used repeatedly to describe skinny people, even though beauty is in the eye of the beholder.) The idea that physical appearance can be a barometer for moral credence is appalling and absurd. The world is not broken up into Evil Curvy Predators and Good Skinny Victims.
The book’s stance on women is obnoxiously out-of-touch too. Almost every female character is married with children, desires a strong marriage or children, and desires to demure to a strong man in their lives.
There are some romantic passages about the scenery of Pagford, and some equally disparaging remarks about the squalor of The Fields, the eyesore of new construction, the “graffiti and hoodies” which seem to be multiplying in abundance as the city of Yarvil expands… There is not a flip-side moment where someone tries to beautify their home in The Fields with a window box, or a youth is scene making an amazing graffiti mural, or a person in a hood is shown to be an upstanding moral person… Despite the horrible interiors of the Pagfordians she reveals, she doesn’t do much to show a contrast of thoughtful, caring, Yarvillians. Leaving me to assume, that JKR actually believes that rich, predominantly white, suburbs and British countryside, are more beautiful and more moral than urban families/settings. Given, in recent years, how JKR has been very vocal about Brexit and other such topics, it is not surprising, but it is overwhelmingly disappointing and sad, that JKR uses The Casual Vacancy to defend exclusion over inclusion.

Final thoughts: There are ways to address mature topics that draw the reader in. The Casual Vacancy condescends to its readers, in the vein of Mother Knows Best. “A skinny, rich, white woman, living in a classic British town, has the perfect moral compass, and therefore has the authority to remind everyone reading that you are all ugly animals who do nothing but gossip and complain,” is not a story anyone needed or wanted. There is great, adult writing out there: dramas, mysteries, parodies… All of them more welcoming than JKR’s journal in disguise. Don’t read this book.

Spooky and fun, but bloated. The book repeats itself, or goes on silly tangents, or characters explain what they're going to do before they do it... Easily could have been a novella.
Plus, body-shaming bald women, who needs that.

Up until the last 20 pages, I was enthralled by the writing in this book. There are so many echoes, it reads like someone trying to recall a memory from long ago, present and past and dreams and things-others-have-told-him all getting muddled. The fearful situations were universal and real.
The ending, by contrast, was a little hokey, and I found myself hoping for just one more turn of the screw to make it "realer" again.
A heart-pounding page-turner, for sure! Well worth the read.

This book is a travesty of children's fiction, and so far removed from the wit which I have come to associate with Jeremy Scott, that I swear he wrote The Most Cliche Kids Book on a drunken dare. That, or this book was secretly a job interview for a new CinemaSins channel called LitSins. If you were looking for smart readers who can catch your off-brand, ironic trope usage, you succeeded; sign me up, Mr. Scott.

Spoilers ahead:

Cliches - Let's get it out of the way, the following cliches were used in lieu of creative or emotional storytelling:
* A kid learns they have magical powers as they hit or near puberty.
* Protagonist just moved to a new town, and has concerns about fitting in.
* Protagonist has never had friends, but within a day at their new school they have besties for life /and/ a rival for life.
* A school for mutants. I'm sorry, for kids with magic. One more time, superpowers.
* A teacher or mentor gives a "grudging", heavily detailed info dump about the ancient, legendary, evil magic-user who was totally defeated and definitely won't be coming back as the big bad of this book.
* Prophecies.
* A magical cult/order/group assumed long gone is definitely still active, and recruits or attempts to recruit the protagonist.
* Origin of magical powers is - drum roll - ancient Western Europe! As if only white people can dole out destiny!
* "Roll Credits" - The CinemaSins term for when the title is dropped in the work.
* Defeat the leader and the rest of their evil army becomes a non-problem. Looking at you, Night King!
* A "game" which turns into a real conflict between Good and Evil. Looking at you, Goblet of Fire, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.
* Characters discuss plans they already know solely for the thinly veiled benefit of informing the audience.
* A scarred, dapper, old, British dude is the villain.
* Villain monologuing.
* Villain oversharing, and then needing to silence the protagonists because they know too much.
* Dead mom/Coma.
*"Playing the Pronoun Game!" -A CinemaSins term for characters using pronouns (him, her, it) to discuss something very specific that they're all familiar with, and wouldn't discuss in such a cryptic way, but the author wants to "surprise" the audience with a reveal later.
* Cartoon physics.
* "There is no Good and Evil" villain speech.
* "You and I are a lot alike" villain speech.
* Author breaks their own rules of magic.
* "You better come take a look at this."
* Magical protagonist gains even more, hitherto untapped, magical powers just in time for the final boss battle.
* Another villain monologue, this time about how the hero has no real choices besides Their Own Death, Death of Many, or Death of All.
* "No capes!"

Ableism - I cringe bringing this one up, because it seems like a lot of genuine love went into writing a book where disabled children save the day. That's a moving premise, there isn't enough representation in fantasy/fiction, and there definitely aren't enough protagonists with disabilities.
The problem is that the differently abled children in this story are not represented /well/. In the same way that queer-baiting is promising a queer story, but delivering a minor character who behaves in a cliche manner, or black-baiting is promising a black story, but then delivering a minor character with no mention of dealing with racism, this book is a form of baiting: It promised a story about disabled superheroes, but delivered an over-sized cast whose disabilities were "corrected" instead of incorporated or ignored entirely.
* Phillip, the blind protagonist, gains sight through technology and the help of a fellow super friend. He uses his new-found sight, and some deductive reasoning, to defeat the enemy. His blindness was treated like a hindrance to cure, instead of a part of his person and a potential motivation for how to solve problems differently from his peers.
* Henry, the aforementioned super friend, is wheelchair-bound. His superpowers are mentally based: he can read minds, speak to people through thoughts, and plant whatever he sees into the minds of others. About midway through the book, Henry becomes Phillip’s prop, and is teleported, pushed, or otherwise wheeled around purely to give Phillip a view of his surroundings. This would have been a great opportunity for conflict: Henry could have resented being used like an accessory or a sidekick instead of a proper hero, and he could have resented the team for “able-ising” when he’s proud of his mobility in a wheelchair and proud of their representation as a differently abled team. Instead, Henry becomes not only a physical prop, but an emotional crutch, existing only to buoy Phillip’s spirits.
* Bentley, the brains behind Phillip’s newfound sight, has ataxic cerebral palsey. It comes up once or twice as he stumbles in excitement. But it never effects his ability to use tools/make inventions, climb trees, or thwart enemies. Bentley has a super brain, and can extrapolate data faster than your average person. It would have been an interesting conflict for Bentley to overcome: to see him frustrated when he can imagine the solution he needs, but can’t command his body to perform with the necessary grace/precision. Or, to see Bentley not frustrated at all, but rather optimistic and dogged; perhaps his friends would underestimate him, and it could have been a source of interpersonal conflict. Bentley is also the only hero who thinks the evil Mr. Finch might have some good ideas, pursuing a superhero with the gift of every superpower. It would have been nice if either his love of knowledge, or a frustration with the limits of physical/human abilities, led him to join the baddies.
* James, the blind teleporter, isn't supposed to be able to teleport to places he hasn't been to before, he needs the spatial/tactile familiarity to sense his destination. By the end of the book he can teleport to another city/state with only a verbal description of the place. His impediment was only an impediment... until it wasn't. Not as a sign of growth, but because the author wanted the plot to be able to move elsewhere. James has practically no dialogue in the book, and Phillip often forgets that James is with them. The audience does too, Phil. The audience does too.
*Freddie has asthma. He puffs on his inhaler like a chain smoker would a cigarette. Asthma medication is medicine: It’s not needed with every breath. It has dosage cycles, like any other medicine. If Freddie had an oxygen tank, and needed oxygen with every breath, that would have been a different matter, and scored another point for representation. A tangled oxygen tank, a punctured tank, a villain with fireballs making Freddie a flammable liability, all would have made for interesting conflicts. Even Freddie as an asthmatic could have had an asthma attack due to stress or exertion at any point. But nope, Freddie is a gimmick, a single description of a character tick which is repeated two dozen times and effects the plot not a jot. He runs from henchmen just fine, if you’re wondering.
* Patrick has ADHD. Until he doesn’t; he just shuts off his hyperactivity when he’s sad. Or he’s trying to be polite. Or he needs to be focused during a meeting. Flick, like a light switch.
My long-winded point being that no character’s disability is used as A) Motivation for how to address the plot differently from an able-bodied person, or B) A catalyst for conflict, or even C) A barely remarkable character trait like green eyes or red hair. Instead, every disability is a D for Defect, which gets “corrected” - be it in universe or because the author gets sloppy – over the course of the book.

Other Biases – I wish the list stopped there, I really do, but this book was problematic for other reasons.
* When the Black Hermione controversy came up, I realized I had brain blinders: I’m white, and when I would read books I would imagine the protagonist as white, until the author said otherwise. I realized that’s racist, there is no reason why white should be the default. Other people have different defaults; why couldn’t I make a conscious effort to imagine black protagonists, until informed otherwise? So, that’s what I’ve been striving to do… And about midway through this book, the characters were diverse in my head, until Phillip was surprised to finally see Henry, and realized he’s black. This jarringly informed me of two things: Phillip is not black, and in fact no one in this book – besides Henry – is a person of color. It was a let down that this book is about a bunch of super white boys, and it was an insult that blackness should be surprising.
* Speaking of boys… I have an extreme aversion to books without strong, female characters. I don’t like the old guard, boys club, around comics/games/high fantasy/sci fi/anime and manga, etc. Like girls don’t like superpowers? Or fights between Good and Evil? Or coming of age stories? If anything, the success and clamor for Wonder Woman, WandaVision, Captain Marvel, and the like, should tell you that girls are hungry for bad@$$ representation in superhero fiction. A giant cast of superpowered girls was introduced in this book, each given a paragraph of physical and supernatural details… Minus one, brief cameo at Halloween, NONE of the girls EVER reappear in this book! Not a single one helps to save the day! I was expecting a girl squad to crash into our boy wonders at some point, and team up Stranger Things style. I think in this day and age, when electives and careers aren’t as segregated as they used to be, it’s more likely that a group of kids rallies around a common interest, than a common gender. I expected our heroes to be more mixed.
* And speaking of genders… There is a moment when our heroes start to gain some notoriety at school, and Phillip remarks that he and the boys were tickled that the popular girls were flirting with them. Another shocking awakening for me: The cis bias. I had no reason to assume that all the boys would like female attention, but this author thinks I should. I had no reason to assume that an athletic, talkative girl in a short skirt is flirting, i.e. desires the sexual attention of the boy she’s talking to. But this author does! There is another line of Phillip’s, where he muses that he would like to turn invisible so that he can spy on girls changing, which underscores the problem further: “Boys will be boys” is archaic, dangerous, and foolish. Girls are not objects, and not every boy fetishizes girls, AND not every person is drawn to bodies over other traits.
Okay, getting off my soapbox now…

Mechanics and Lack of Art – But my last angst with this book are the mechanical problems! I am a very tough critic of children’s books, A) Because I studied how to write them, and B) Because I read a lot of them, and know what the genre’s capable of delivering. Just because it’s written for kids, doesn’t mean a book can’t have character arcs, themes or motifs, mature conversations or conflicts, metaphors, and/or tone… Apparently, Jeremy missed the memo. This book is severely lacking in dimension.
* The characters swap archetypes and personalities. Bentley is the brains and the leader. Until he isn’t, then Phillip takes charge, or is named leader. Phillip is a pessimist. Until he isn’t, and instead he’s a mediator who tries to encourage his friends. Henry is a pragmatist, and his brutal honesty makes others cringe. Until he isn’t, and he’s sentimental, talking Phillip back from making brutal decisions. These characters don’t grow in an arc, from one way of thinking to another. They flip-flop back and forth, round and round, for the entirety of the book.
* Some plot elements make leaps in logic. Why does Phillip assume what slowed them down in their first SuperSim were their disabilities, and not the fact that they had no clues to follow as to where the villains would be? Why does the SuperSim take place at night, across the town, when real criminals might be out at night, and some families still have naive family members (like Patrick) who shouldn’t see superheroes at work. How come James can teleport into, but not out of, the library? Why does Donnie disappear when he has ALL superpowers? Isn’t he an indestructible healer who can teleport? Why does Chad agree to have his arm cut off to get back at a kid he suckerpunched? Why does Finch kill Chelsey, the No Power Zone generator, when he needs an NPZ to keep his super hostages from escaping? Why does Phillip think the best way to fight a villain with fire powers is to pour gasoline? So many holes.
* The further on in the book, the more typos and grammatical errors. Things like, “It was a Monday during the fifth week of school.” Weeks only have one Monday each, so you wouldn’t have to say a Monday. Just say Monday. Just say Monday!

An over-expositional, heartless, meandering mess of a book, which insults its author and its audience. You’re better than this, Jeremy Scott. Proofread. Read out loud. Read to your friends. Then try again.

A beautiful story of grief, bias, compassion and redemption. It almost reads like a dark, modernized Pride and Prejudice. The bookends - beginning and end - were a bit "much" for me. The teen angst is HEAVY, and the ending is a little too saccharine. But the middle, the meat and potatoes, is aaaaall Kemmerer. It's artfully paced, beautiful and melancholy in its tone and metaphors, and just tugs at your heartstrings. I sat down with this book thinking, "I just need a little something to tide me over until 'A Vow so Bold and Deadly' comes out", and instead I devoured the book in one sitting.

I am grading this book harshly because I had been expecting something either supernatural, or a little more manic-pixie-dream-boy/quirky road trip, and instead discovered that this book is New Americana. I hate Americana. I don't see the romance in a truck, a dog, a beer, a diner, the open road and the even more open sky. I hate Steinbeck and Hemingway and Salinger, and talking about minutiae as if it means the world, and watching a protagonist struggle with their /thoughts/ for 400 pages before abruptly ending. Fair warning, I'm a biased critic on this one. Spoilers ahead:

First off, props where props are due, I appreciated what this book was /trying/ to do. I like that this generation's coming-of-age-in-America story is about being a descendant of immigrants and being queer, and not really understanding one's own body, or place in the world, or how to find "normal"/feel secure. And I appreciated the motif of everyone carries a private war or storm around inside themselves, and is forever hurting and healing and becoming someone new.

I did /not/ appreciate the mechanics Sáenz used to sell these themes. For a narrator who's not keen on talking, this book is surprisingly dialogue heavy, but the dialogue is awkward and either pithy or self-righteous. I didn't believe in Dante or Aristotle as characters, either. So they're not jocks, fine. So, they like to write or draw, makes sense. Ari doesn't like TV? Doubtful. Dante spends whole hours reading /poetry/ to Ari, or sketching him, or writing him snail mail asking if he enjoys masturbating??? No boy ever - be they artistic, queer, shy, whatever - acts like this at 15-17 years old. It was too much to believe.

And the book itself didn't seem to believe that this was a queer love story. Ari insists until the very last page of the book that he's "just friends" with Dante. There are enough clues between the lines that one /could/ read this as a love story. But the book could have told just as important a message about a platonic relationship between a queer teen and a straight teen: Sometimes you desperately love someone even if it's not sexual; Sometimes the person you're crushing on doesn't feel the same way back and that can make or break a friendship; Sometimes someone we love comes into our lives for only a short while and changes us profoundly, but we go our separate ways; Sometimes you need an ally more than you need a boyfriend, etc. I feel like most My Fair Lady fans did when the play was adapted to film: Yes, you COULD read a romance between Higgins and Eliza, but the story is stronger when it's about a lop-sided relationship which Eliza /outgrows/ and /leaves behind/.

And as much as I love queer representation, I found Dante to be toxic. Red flags:
1) Dante bathes Ari, insisting he has consent from Ari's mom, and that it won't be weird. He doesn't exactly /ask/ Ari.
2) Dante repeatedly pushes his desire to go swimming with Ari, even when Ari is sick, recovering from injuries, or the weather is bad. He doesn't consider Ari's condition, only how good it would make /him/ feel to be swimming (touching, wet and half-naked) together.
3) Dante keeps score of how many letters he writes to Ari, versus how many he receives, and guilts Ari for being less intimate/a bad friend.
4) Dante asks Ari for embarrassing, private details, like, "How many times a day do you masturbate, and what do you think about?"
5) Ari tells Dante he's not into boys, and Dante is not to try and kiss him. Dante ignores this boundary, and insists that they should kiss. Ari REPEATEDLY SAYS NO, and Dante ignores that lack of consent, kissing him anyway.
6) Dante and Ari get caught in the rain, in the desert. Without preamble, Dante strips naked in front of Ari.
7) Dante substitutes a different boy, Daniel, for Ari, and /tells/ Ari that he's using Daniel to imagine being with Ari.
8) Dante attempts to make Ari jealous by dating Daniel. He then gets angry when he, seemingly, was unsuccessful, and Ari didn't follow them to a party to prove any hidden feelings for Dante.
9) Dante ends their friendship because Ari won't be in a relationship with him.
Many of these moments are meant to be cute, or are meant to illustrate that these boys belong together (Some boys belong to the summer sun, others to the storm. These boys are always wet. You get it? Metaphors!). But I found it disturbing how many times Dante tries to manipulate Ari, instead of being a good friend/partner in his own right. I know another one of the themes in this book is how we don't always make the right decisions, especially when we're being ruled by our feelings, and I suppose I should cut Dante some slack for being a teenager in love? But "Boys Will Be Boys" is a toxic message, one the current generation has desperately sought to combat; you shouldn't forgive grooming or abuse just because a boy was horny. And gay characters in fiction being conniving is an old, gross stereotype that recent fiction has ALSO striven to correct. Positive representation is important. How we write queer characters is important. Believe it or not, dear readers, audiences are impressionable! Shock! A book has the ability to inspire compassion, or inspire fear... I think Dante is poor queer representation, and I think he feeds some people's fears that gay people are predators. I think the reveal that Bernardo murdered a transvestite double underscores that fear. I think, without meaning to, this book actually reinforced the arguments of people who would decry queer folk.

Circling all the way back to the beginning: The title. Did this book deliver on its promise?... Kind of? What "secrets" did Aristotle and Dante really discover? That some boys like kissing boys? That people, in general, have more going on inside than they share outside? That dogs are perpetually happy, and humans are not? I'm not sure the "secrets" really counted as secrets, and the self-discoveries the protagonists make were kind of no-brainers. The biggest one of all being when Ari's parents have to /tell/ him he's in love with Dante; Ari doesn't figure that secret out for himself. I found Ari's philosophical musings to be immature - well-written for a teen voice, certainly, but underwhelming to an adult audience. I caught myself rolling my eyes or yelling at the book, unimpressed that Ari took so long to discover some things, or considered basic common sense to be "secrets" at all.

Someone will enjoy this book. Just not me :/.