simonlorden's Reviews (1.38k)

God. This started out slow, but it got really intense. I had everything wrong. Wow.

major tw for rape mention and bullying

I wish we'd seen more of Peter in the last chapter though, he seemed like a nice guy.

I'm loving the Tiffany series so far, although the accents of the wee free men are seriously distracting sometimes.

This is a sweet romcom where two women who have been best friends since childhood get married in order for one of them to get her inheritance which they can split. I loved how Lo and Cara started out from different places: Lo is already out as queer, and Cara still believes herself to be straight at the beginning of the story. I also liked that going to a therapist to work through your feelings even if you don't have a specific mental illness was normalised and treated as a positive thing.

Note: Lo and Cara both state or at least imply that they are only attracted to women, but they only ever describe themselves as "queer". I don't remember either of them self-describing as a lesbian at any point, hence why I'm not calling them that either.

However, I'm not the first and probably not the last person to say that this book could have used more editing. Others pointed out several inconsistencies, but the one that really bothered me was that the transgender male side character is described as gay in the first chapter, but later he dates girls, and even Lo talks about him finding "the right girl". Also, this is my pet peeve, but the formatting made it difficult to tell who was speaking sometimes. In everything I read, if you have a line of dialogue from character A then an action by character B, then you write them in different lines, but that wasn't what happened here.

It took me weeks to get to 19% in this so at this point I think I should just accept it's not for me. Sorry :(

I have so many feelings. this book answered so many questions I've been asking, and gave me so many things I wanted, and I'm very happy but also I hurt.

1) I'm here for dragging Eira, please do it more often
2) a Firstborn I actually LIKE? a rarity
3) so many Luidaeg feels. ouch. she might be losing Annie but she has a sister who loves her and oh my god, I'd been waiting for Toby to tell her she loves her for SO LONG and she actually did?! I'm so happy.
4) I hoped there would be more Gillian. I love her, even if she's breaking my heart. I can't really blame her, but I still hope she'll make up with Toby eventually
5) I love the Lordens and I'm glad they are around
6) nonbinary character!
7) RAJ
8) uhm. what the fuck Marcia. just. what the fuck.

god, can we talk about how Toby actually called Simon her stepfather though

the fact that this was Tybalt POV made it even better than it otherwise would have been, and holy shit, he's so smitten.

All children, except one, grow up.

this book was... much weirder than I expected. and I liked some of it, but the racism and the rigid gender roles didn't age well. also, Peter is actually creepy as fuck.

also I'm scared of my MA thesis

"I love her."
"Then you do not love the Lord."
"Yes, I love both of them."
"You cannot."
"I do, I do, let me go."

Rating: 3.5 stars maybe?

This was a tough read, both the topic and the execution. I loved the introduction written by the author 27 years after originally writing the book - I was surprised to learn that this wasn't a memoir, but a novel that is loosely based on the life of the author. Oh, and it has random fairytale and legend segments sometimes, because why not. That was weird.

I knew from the blurb that this book would portray the main character's religious upbringing and childhood, but I sort of figured that the childhood and university parts would be equal, which wasn't true. This whole novel takes place at home, Jeanette only moves away towards the end, and even then most of the scenes are about her visiting home.

I admit that the writing style really didn't work for me sometimes, it went on such tangents that I had no idea what was going on. Other times, I enjoyed the dialogue and the narration, but mostly I was confused.

And I suppose that is the saddest thing for me, thinking about the cover version that is Oranges, is that I wrote a story I could live with. The other one was too painful. I could not survive it.

I don't know what on earth was wrong with me the first time I read this and rated it 4 stars. On a second read, this was heartwrenching, fascinating and impossible to put down from start to finish. The title already suggests this will be a difficult read, and indeed it tells the (true) story of a difficult life.

This memoir deals with so many subjects that if it had been fiction, I might have thought it was overkill at some points. Also, it's possible I appreciated it more the second time because this time I couldn't help but look at it through the lenses of my university classes in gender studies and women's life writing, and this book so wonderfully demonstrates the things we talked about that I think my teacher could do the entire course with just this one.

My favourite parts were still the callbacks to Oranges (the revelation about Elsie that hits you hard near the beginning, specifically), and the adult half of the novel where the writer deals with her trauma in a lot of ways, including talking to the 'creature' inside her and reaching out to friends and others.

some triggers include: parental neglect/emotional abuse (?), religious homophobia, a suicide attempt, suicidal ideation

And I guess that is the key - no one is ever going to lock me in or lock me out again. My door is open and I am the one who opens it.

Okay, first of all: this wasn't a book, it was a miracle.

I've put this off for so long and now I'm so glad I read it. It had wonderful girls, friendships, young people acting selfishly and stupidly and realistically, character development and doing better, lots of artsy stuff, beautiful quotes, the importance of credits and set design, a mystery, dealing with homelessness, adoption... siblings I love! Basically I just loved it and it was awesome. Definitely going on my favourites shelf.