Fiona

Formulaic.

I find Wendig's prose entirely too aggressive to allow me to get enjoy the story.

Very readable but not memorable. I was expecting more based on the award nominations.

Meh. I'm all for disabled people as main characters but the writing is pretty wooden and the characterizations are so flat I couldn't keep track of any of the narrator's friends.

Starts out really strong but the narrative (and my interest) waned once the backstory took over.

A fairly easy read, if rather darker in tone than the cover art would suggest. There are serious themes being dealt with here but, related through the lens of a fourteen year old boy's self-denial and worldview, the story doesn't let them take over.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Note to self: don't waste time on books published by SwoonReads.

The 3rd person rotating viewpoint coupled with the use of present tense impede any reading pleasure than might be had from the book. I'm glad to see sexual assault being written about so frankly but disappointed it was done so badly.

Well done and a decent read but formulaic and unmemorable.

The two first person narratives did not have distinct enough voices; I kept forgetting which kid was talking to me. Very distracting.

Too long with far too much explanation from the villains about thier beliefs and motivations.

It never ceases to amaze me how many mediocre books win awards.

The story itself is intriguing but the structure of it left me unable to connect with the characters. If the flashback scene, which is told as one continuous narrative that is far too long and happens far too late in the book, had been doled out piecemeal throughout the novel it would have changed things entirely. As it was, I could have cared less about these protagonists because I just didn't understand where they were coming from until it was too late for me to enjoy the tale. So frustrating.

Thank you to Candlewick Press who were kind enough to send me this ARC for review.

Readable but ultimately disappointing due to a chicken-shit ending and lack of character development.

There's an awful lot of set up in this book. More than I have the patience for right now.

Sloppy.

Well presented and laid-out, making it easy to skip over sections that were irrelevant or useless to me, but I grew weary of his footnotes very quickly.

I struggled to connect with the narrator in this book. She was like a cardboard cut-out. When I got to the end, I discovered that she had not been the narrator in the first draft of this novel and I thought, “Aha!” There are a million ways to tell the same story; not all of them will be good. This one isn't, which is too bad because I enjoyed Ms. Lu's other works immensely.

Cute, clever and quite witty at times but a bit repetitive.

A lovely bit of absurdist fluff.

Some interesting information but sloppily organized and written. One of the traits psychopaths have an abundance of is focus so its a shame the author isn't one.

A high school level introduction to science and critical thinking.

Epistolary novels are difficult to pull off, but Henstra does a wonderful job here.

Twenty-two years ago, I complied an annotated bibliography of YA novels about homosexuality for a college class. It was hard to find enough books on the theme to complete the assignment; there were only a few which had a main character who was struggling with their sexuality and none who were “out”. If I were doing it now, I would have a wealth of choice and I would put this tale right at the top of the list. The characters are great, the pacing solid and the story engaging.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Overall, totally wonderful. But with so many generations and so many characters, I found it difficult to connect emotionally with parts of the story (mostly because I was trying to remember who was who's parent). This is not a book you can put down and come back to later; for maximum enjoyment I recommend reading it as fast as possible.

The writing deserves four stars but the book only gets three because its too damn wordy. Really, it didn't need to be that long.