a beautiful, lyrical love letter to storytelling. 

imagine writing an alternate history of the united states and not mentioning slavery, the civil war, or native americans one single time. that was hanging over my head the entire time the author expected me to care about these kids' love lives. by the end of the book samantha was the only character that didn't make me want to bash my head into the wall. will not be picking up the sequel.

loved this retelling. such a fantastic family and setting, with a great discussion of gentrification. in general, I don't like romance, but I really enjoyed this fun story. I cannot recommend the audiobook enough, elizabeth acevedo is an incredible voice actor. 

read it for the encapsulation of 2012 tumblr fandom culture, stayed for the beautiful, heartfelt story about friendship, found family, and overcoming emotional abuse

one of the scariest books I've ever read. it takes a little while to get into, but once the real horrors start happening it's impossible to put down. highly highly recommend if you're looking for great horror. 

I thought the concept for this book was interesting, but when I picked it up it wasn't what I expected at all.  why did the author focus so much on the shift from modern society to the female-led society and not on the actual day to day in the female-led society? the letters and museum snippets were the most interesting part of the book, and I wish that had been the whole book. the short snapshots we get from those about the new society were ten times more fascinating than the rest. in terms of the actual narrative, I found it to be extremely gratuitous and focused on shock value. this book made me feel physically ill. while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing (the whole point of the book is women committing violence against men in the same way violence has been committed against them for generations), I just don't think it was really contextualized or developed enough to achieve its goal. on top of that, the characters were extremely boring and flat, which is a huge drawback for a multiple POV novel. MAJOR TW in this book for graphic rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and abuse. overall, I thought the book was certainly well written but it was excessively graphic and did not really hit home for me. 

if you love the avatar universe, you need to read this book. kyoshi is an absolute icon and this was the story she deserved. yee did a perfect job of threading in the lore of the two shows while at the same time creating an awesome original story.