shane_the_reading_rat's Reviews (1.21k)

im being so wildly subjective about this book (honestly i see why it has only a 3.9 rating), but personally? i wholeheartedly love it. tillie’s feelings towards having a Thing that you’ve done for so long and you’ve grown to despise it are so specific but so relatable (for me it wasn’t ice skating, but acting). also this is BEAUTIFUL with the different shades of purple :)

not gonna lie, any litfic i read is almost always queer, but despite this being outside of my comfort zone i really enjoyed it!! i’ve never read a short story collection where everything is interconnected, and it made me enjoy the format much more than usual. personal favorite story was The Hashtag, despite that also being the one i have a big issue with??? (i need so many more authors to understand that no, Asperger’s Syndrome is not still used as a diagnosis, just use autism or ASD)

this was short but quite good. an exploration into misogyny both inside and outside of queer spaces and how it affects everyone (not just women). i’m definitely going to read more of Vivek Shraya’s books in the future

holy shit, this is not a drill, this book is incredible. complex characters (that feel so very real),  awesome writing, and gonna be honest. Erica is so relatable to me it hurts. Woodworking has woodworked its way right into my heart and i love it so much.
(this is my favorite coming out narrative i’ve ever read)

my impression that this would be a trans T&T&T was wrong :/
nothing happens in this book (at least to the point where i dnf’ed, 31%) and i would be fine with that except that the characters weren’t compelling at all. i do not care about their storylines. this book does not need as many pages as it has.

deeply not vibing with the insta-lust of Anahrod and Ris, + the storyline is so chaotic and all-over-the-place that i genuinely cannot follow it

[this review may be a bit all-over-the-place. i performed in a musical last night and, frankly, am pretty exhausted].

i can see why people would like I Felt Myself Slipping, but for me it mostly didn’t click (i’ve had a lifelong fascination with gymnastics though, so i did really enjoy that aspect). particularly the time period didn’t make sense to me. it’s set in 1996-97 (in midwest america), but everything is very queernormative (Kota’s friends say multiple times that she should ask Riley out, Riley has two dads). obviously queernormative settings are awesome, but to me it just didn’t make sense here, and the queernormativity is never discussed which just left me struggling to figure out when this was set. this could have been fixed by, idk, maybe something like Kota’s friend group being generally queer and that being disclosed in the book? just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me otherwise, considering the place and time period setting.

if you have an interest in gymnastics, i’d definitely recommend this, but otherwise not really. it has the curse of being just a bit meh.

the thing about this book is that the second half is an absolutely lovely romance, but the first half is shockingly slow paced (the bicycle race that is the main plot point besides the romance? does not start until 45% into the book). i truly do not believe it needed quite that much setup.
also, the miscommunication trope was so prominent in so many places while reading (mainly in the first half). after a while i was just like “oh my god muriel!!! you are smart!!! why did you jump to this incredibly strange conclusion off of one piece of information and then not back down!!!!” got pretty frustrating :/
most other stuff about this i liked though! the author’s note about the historical setting was really cool

once again P. Djèlí Clark makes a book that i love. it’s another day that ends in y

this very much had potential (and i can see why people would like it) but it just didn’t work for me :/
firstly, the romance just left me confused. Lucille and Oreste have the chemistry of close friends, not romantic partners. Lucille and Fifina have the energy of romantic partners, not specifically besties. but in the book this is reversed??? Lucille very much read (to me) as sapphic and i wanted that to be explored, but it never was (even though early on in the book she kisses Fifina).
the politics of this book were also confusing. i think this is just due to the format, being a novel-in-verse it focuses much more on things being poetic than having explanations of the politics (of course there are novels-in-verse out there that do explain politics well. this one just couldn’t).
i do like the setting, and i liked cousin Phebus and Fifina (unfortunately, i did not like Lucille. she did not have much of a personality).