Really liked this realistic portrayal of what children of color go through and how they're treated by people who are supposed to be teaching them. I think a lot of kids will be able to see their experience represented and feel like their experience has been validated.

TW r**e

I guess I can understand how this can be called a feminist book because of the stories of the Blakely women in the forest facing persecution during their lifetime before the forest.

But I wish they had gotten some sort of justice or they were at peace in the end at least.

Also men would wander into the woods and the women would make them confused and r**e them and that made me uncomfortable. I've looked at a lot of reviews and no one mentions that. If it were men in the forest doing that to women, people would call that r**e quickly but because it's women doing it to men, it's "sexual liberation". I don't get the relationship between Maisie and Peter, they never explain why he has Maisie call him Peter. Maisie seems to be at the mercy of whatever men are around her. The ending was anti-climatic and unsatisfying.

I really liked the form that this verse novel takes. The line breaks are purposeful and give them a different meaning at times. It kept the story moving but it didn't feel rushed. I know this book is for kids but I thought it was funny that a girl joining the baseball team was such a mindblowing concept to Trace. I also wish that the TBI could have been talked about more but I understand that the TBI wasn't the point of the book, it was just a reason for Will to change and turn to drugs.

I liked the third person narrator. I liked that Nina liked books and enjoyed being alone. But other parts of this book just pissed me off. First of all, 10 year olds do not sound like the 10 year olds talking in this book. Just because the kid reads a lot of books, doesn't mean they talk like a posh British person. A 10 year old is also not as emotionally intelligent as the one in this book.

Secondly, the conversation Tom has with his brother really pissed me off because he kept describing Nina as small, as if that's a really attractive feature she has. Why is it such a big deal that she's small? Why does she have to be small? Why is he so fixated on it?

The ending felt so rushed. I wanted to hear more about her new family. by the end I hated Tom.

He couldn't even handle her having ONE anxiety attack. And then they get back together like nothing happened and he's like "I want to be with you the way you are", as if he hadn't just not responded to her for a week because she had an anxiety attack. They didn't even really talk about what happened.

Ugh.

This book will be going in the donate pile.

Of course, some of the language used and the way some characters talked were problematic. I found some of the stories to be confusing. It was fine.

I felt like I was watching one of John's videos or reading his blog but it felt more personal and vulnerable than that. It was so interesting to read his take on despair and him opening up about his depression. I like how he talked about the pandemic but didn't make it the center of the book, just briefly mentioned in some essays and in the background. My favorite quote from the book was, "We are so small, and so frail, so glorious and terrifyingly temporary." OOF!

I give the Anthropocene Review by John Green 5 stars.

I don't usually read fantasy but I gave this book a shot and really liked it. I enjoyed the different perspectives and I really liked the magic. Loved to watch the characters develop and get put in situations that put them out of their comfort zones. The book took many unexpected turns but they made sense and I liked that I couldn't predict what would happen or who Vivenna should trust. If/when a sequel comes out I would read it.

It was hard for me to like Eleanor at first, which was different for me since I've never read a book with a narrator that I didn't like. But over time I had more compassion for her and she became less robotic and more human. This was a really interesting book to read and I'm glad I chose it.

I was expecting to like this book. I read and enjoy a lot of young adult books so I thought it would be right up my alley. But I absolutely hated this book. All the characters were way too connected to each other and it got really confusing. John Green has been criticized for writing teenage characters that don't talk like teenagers but this book takes it to a whole other level. I couldn't connect with any of the characters because I felt like they were trying to impress me with the way they talked the whole time. It was exhausting to read. One star for queer representation.