Fiona
Very readable. Well-drawn characters immersed in a solid plot that unfolded like an origami flower. Lots of issues including abortion, teen pregnancy, homophobia, and gender identity are brushed in but overall this is a coming of age story.
I received an ARC of the book from the publisher for review so thank you to Candlewick Press.
Some of these are great and some suck really hard. The piece on Peggy Guggenheim is literally all about the men she came into contact with. Many are about the famous femme's influence on the writer which I found tiresome; the one on Misty Cohen is the most egregious example with a blonde ballerina inserting herself into the story. Overall, more misses than hits.
Technically only 3.5 stars but I'm rounding up because I feel sorry for this book.
Its a nice bit of fluff but the pacing is uneven and everything was just so damn predictable. Also making Jett a brown boy seemed like tokenism and it loses marks for all the pop culture references. Still, the plot is cute enough and while not meaty, there's enough to carry the story and characterization of major players is solid. Given this is the author's debut novel, I would read future efforts.
When I was 13, the staff of the psychiatric ward where I spent some time were very fond of saying, “Sometimes in life you have to do things you don't want to.” Mr. Joseph begins his introduction with this timeworn cliche but claims that this is a Black people thing. It would have been the perfect time to establish a sense of shared humanity (especially when writing for teenagers!) but the author drops the ball and never bothers to pick it up. Repeatedly, the author misses a teachable moment that seemed obvious to me. Racism and discrimination are framed as some kind of competition; although he deigns to mention the nonsense Muslims face these days, the author insists that to be a Black person is the worst thing in the world to be and I can't help but feel he has very little appreciation for how much privilege he has derived from his Y chromosome, nevermind from being healthy and able-bodied.
The writing itself is very sound and there were stories I enjoyed hearing but this book should have been written by someone who knows how to write for young people. (Lord knows there are plenty of talented Black YA authors out there.)
I received an ARC of this book free from Candlewick Press for review.
This could have been a great read but it wasn't; it is too sprawling and amorphous. And that's a shame because the writing isn't bad and Chee clearly did lots of research. Focusing on just a few characters, instead of trying to create 14 different narrators, would have yielded a more readable novel; every time I started to get into a character, it would shift to somebody else and lose my established interest.
I would have given this book four stars but it lacks the sort of author note which I feel all historical fiction ought to be privy, a clarification for readers identifying which bits are historical and which bits are fiction. Overall, I enjoyed the story and I found it less laboured than the first book (a book I did not finish). It was a quick and easy read and probably a good resource for helping children understand the day-to-day lives of black folk at the turn of the 20th century (but it could have been great if it had the sort of author note it should have).
I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for review so thank you to Candlewick Press.
Not a fan of novels in verse but my weakness for historical fiction won out. It is well-done, the verses echoing the cadence of the story. However, the lack of detail (which would have been offered in standard prose) left me unable to get into the story or learn the sorts of things I normally do via historical fiction.
