shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

haven’t read this recently at all, but wanted to review this cause it absolutely changed my life when i was a kid. i read this in about 2017 or so when i was roughly 11/12 (i dont remember exactly), and it was the first time i had ever seen a trans character. in anything. i wanted to be Alex so deeply. my copy of this book has been read many times and has the wear and tear to prove it
genuinely idk where i would be if i hadn’t read this and been like “wait… i don’t have to be a girl?”
thanks rick riordan for being part of my trans awakening (along with obsessively watching dan and phil on youtube as a 12 year old) <3

never thought i would like a legal thriller again after 2020 when i got bored and marathoned my dad’s entire john grisham collection
pacing got extremely weird at the end, however overall i really enjoyed this, and i appreciate a queer book that is both not set in america/the uk and not set in today’s time
i think people who liked The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi would like this too!! both books deal with similar topics (mainly, being queer in africa)

big Hell Followed With Us energy
also such an interesting take on zombie horror, also utilizes pandemic/contagion/sickness horror which is literally my favorite type of horror
the found family made me cry, also btw i despised Zoey for a while but she grew on me a lot !!
Angel my beloved
i love the dynamic between Monica and Ian, as someone who was a disabled kid and is now a disabled adult what they had hit hard for me
also i adore Ian and Eric !! and this setting is incredible !!

ik from reading a lot of reviews of this that the slow pace didn’t work for a lot of people and i get that. but jesus what scares me in horror isnt the scary things but the suspense, and this had killer suspense with its page count and pace.
also this has some freaky body horror, with Gyre’s suit??? terrifying that in this universe capitalist space-mining has gone so far that there are surgeries to rearrange your organs so you can stay underground for as long as (literally) physically possible. for me that was easily the scariest aspect of this book
for a while i was like “🤨idk if this is gonna be a 5 star read, em and gyre are pretty flat characters🤨” but yknow what? fuck it of course theyre flat its a life or death situation and of course theyre not thinking and talking about their entire lives, they’re focusing on gyre escaping the cave
<3 i love this book and it terrified me

romance was too fast paced but that honestly didn’t affect my enjoyment cause these vibes were impeccable 
the big reveal made me audibly gasp
does the dog die?

nope!! Thisbe recovers from her injuries. however, there is a zombie dog who gets killed, and there’s lots and lots of zombie animals in this story that die

1: this is due at the library tomorrow :))) gotta return it
2: apparently the actual American Daughters stuff in the description doesn’t occur until 2/3rds of the way in and i have just had such a string of books ive disliked. not sticking around for it for that long i dont have the energy for it

their beef was NOT big enough to justify how much they talked about hating each other
also if they were so close with mrs barnes why is she so rarely mentioned?? why is the conflict so easily resolved in the end?? why

is the death of Timi

only mentioned in the third act when that should be such an important shaping event for Tiwa?? why does Said lie about having a strawberry allergy when he could’ve just told the waiter that he and Tiwa aren’t in a relationship??
idk dude im so sad that so many books this year that i’ve anticipated have just crashed and burned
ive been hyped for this since DECEMBER
GODDAMN DECEMBER

believe me it makes me incredibly sad to not like this. i own this book and have anticipated reading it for so long, and for me it fell horrifically flat.
•the prose was just too flowery to me, and Red and Blue sounded exactly the same. which doesn’t make sense because they’re from completely different societies with seemingly very different values and ideals!!!
•the time war in the title? barely mentioned in the book :( very sad i was so intrigued by that
•i was also just confused by everything happening. ik every review praises the writing but i found it too vague to fully understand.
•Red and Blue fall in love with zero buildup and i was like “did i miss something???”
•

Red fully kisses very small child Blue. on the mouth. jesus fucking christ

i feel so bad for not liking this, and was worried that like “do i just not get it cause im not sapphic? is it cause i dont experience romantic attraction? am i just plain stupid and all these other reviewers are right???” but,,,, no. there are plenty of sapphic romances i’ve loved. it’s just this specific one that i deeply don’t click with. jesus christ this is really the year of “shane finally gets around to books he’s anticipated for such a long time and then they are massive disappointments”

went a bit too far into pretentious-land for me, with all the literary references

i wanted to punch Rafie in the face throughout most of this book, which really hindered my enjoyment
it’s definitely a good book, and i would recommend it!! it’s an exploration of grief, a mariachi story, and a romance (where the love interest, Rey, is trans). i just found the rivals-to-lovers to be extremely over the top, since honestly it’s not really even rivals. it’s just Rafie in 50% of this book saying every page how much better he is than everyone at his new school, how they don’t deserve him, how much their mariachi group sucks, blah blah blah he yaps so much and honestly is a complete dick. and throughout that Rey is pretty much just 😐 unless Rafie directly antagonizes him (

such as the scene where Rey stumbled in his words in a performance and Rafie steps up in front of him and begins singing

). so yeah its not even rivals, its just Rafie being a brat. i could not understand how Rey could still want a relationship after how awful Rafie was to everyone.
(yes ik “the characters are teens so of course they’re annoying” 1: it wasn’t every character who was being frustrating. it was just Rafie. 2: im a teen (18 years old) and i dont know literally anyone who would act or has acted like Rafie did in this book. dont just decide “well teens are annoying so of course theyre annoying in books” that’s a really weird line of thought! theres incredible YA books where teens act like teens yet aren’t brats like Rafie is in most of this book!!!)