Shy Swag

This book will probably satisfy a persons romcom itch. It has clear character arcs, hits all the story beats, and promotes healthy relationships, has good conversations about culture and race as well.

My low rating for this book comes from the chemistry and humor. Lina and Max were two pieces of cardboard. Not a single line in this book is funny, any attempt at humor is terribly dated and clunky. I really wanted to like this book, as I read more and more romance it is difficult to find books that aren't rife with sexism, bad communication, classism, racism, this book had NONE of that.

I think I really despised this style of writing. The sex scenes were grating, I felt no relationship between anyone in this book most of the two leads. I also cant stress how unfunny this was to me, I think that's what really turned me off from this book.

The best thing about this book is the aesthetics. I love the cover, the paintings, I even enjoyed how the pictures were printed. There are some good lines in there as well, but the poetry itself is only ok. Maybe less so than ok.

As far as Lana Del Rey as a celebrity goes I don't like her very much. I think some of the pretentious white girl shines through in this book.

I loved this book like nothing else. I carried it with my everywhere for weeks after finishing it, I even wrote notes in the book (a sin by my standards) but I did it because I loved this work so much. I read it at work, I read it before sleeping and I read it over and over.

As always Leonard Cohen has a type of poetic music that is in all of his words. Not a word seems out of place or wasted. Each page flows into the next with such ease. Shout out to that 1990 Christian Slater film for introducing me to Cohen when I was 14.

Boring and dull, I was bitter and annoyed the entire time I read.

I liked the idea of watching the girl fall to the cult through her boyfriend's view. The rape scene was, in my eyes, entirely unnecessary. Phoebe was already too deep in the cult for her to come back to reality so easily, it's framed that her sexual assault is what drives the nail in the coffin sealing her fate in the cult

She was already in the cult at that point, she would have just continued to be sucked in further. I find it frustrating that that scene is framed in such a manner.

I got this as a birthday present when I was in 7th grade. Like any book I am obsessed with it will never leave my side. I would spend some recesses reading this, and I loved when my classmates would leaf through it and be amazed at how absurd it looked.

I have two copies now. The first one having been devoured by time. Throughout high school, when I was in a particular dark place I would just hold the book to my chest during class, re-read my favorite passages I had marked. The first copy doesn't even have a cover anymore, it's been lent out to so many of my friends.

The second copy has a hardcover and remains mostly untouched. I have it incase the first one is out of office. My point is this book is beautiful (a word which I hardly use and dislike) and it helped me out a lot.

there were a few really good lines but overall this was so boring and unfunny for me

I was torn about this book. A lot of the claims that it's “trauma porn” and one of those “gay torture” books threw me from reading it for a long time. I waited until I felt a bit more comfortable reading it and was surprised to find that I really only considered one aspect of this book to be belonging in the “indulgent trauma pity party” and that is the cutting. Jude has many many many scenes of him cutting and the are sometimes too long. This is really the only thing that irked me about this book.

The way this book is talked about I was prepared to read rape scenes, but this is spared from the reader. While there are lots and lots of mention and talk of rape, sexual violence and abuse it is not forthright with the descriptions, often it's factual and short. There is also a ladder that we climb as we read, the higher we go the more the skyline of Judes past makes sense and begins to fit together.

For those who say that Judes abuse is too “spectacular” fuck you. For those who say that his friends and loved ones made the wrong decisions regarding his health, yes they did but have you ever been put into that position? It's a very terrible position to be in. My one true gripe with these characters, for how smart and talented they are all supposed to be, is why none of them ever tried to get Jude to meet other sexual abuse victims?

One of my favorite scenes is where Harold is speaking to JB in the kitchen, JB is straightforward (as he always is) and tells Harold that him, Malcolm and Willem suspect that Jude was subjected to sexual abuse as a child. I expected this to really shift Jude's perspective or have him contemplate why his friends suspected, no, knew, this so easily of him. For him to realize that he must not be alone in his struggles.

Of course my favorite relationship in this book are Jude's three closest friends. Willem, JB and Malcolm. How it stretches and changes over time, the elastic bond of titanium that some people have to each other.

But most stunning is the language, the prose, and the overall writing. It's a novel meticulously strung together. My favorite bits, that were annoying at first, are the way characters are mentioned, but they come back. Most every name dropped circles around and around making a full web of life that our main cast inhabits. It's quite an impressive feat of character.

This is one I suspect is lost in translation. A handful of passages and lines, showed a tender but brooding type of prose that was hard to find consistently. I also find that I was wanting more! I wanted more action, more of Crystal acting out, more of Mina, more of Minho and Crystal. Many pages of this book are doting on the philosophical sturggles that come from class and student life. I can admit that that style is not my taste, but I can imagine if read at the right time this book could leave a more pleasant impact for some.

There were a few times the author would refuse to tell us about the torture and abuse that this girl had to endure. I cant help but think “why not do that again and again? what's the point of us looking at these scenes when sometimes you hide other scenes?”

There is something captivating about Ketchums writing. The atmosphere of town and the setting was enjoyable and played a large part of why I kept reading.

Finding out this was based on a real case? That's abhorrent. Disgusting. That thought should have been kept private this book does a dishonor. This book is not really scary, it's not really horror. This book was about voyeurism. About bearing witness to crime and abuse and doing nothing. I could see that this was supposed to be the point.

What ends up happening is this circus of abuse. I don't doubt abuse like the scenes described in the novel have happened. What I am saying is that this author makes a circus of it. A spectacle. Our protagonist is a young boy, a child himself. His view and understanding of the abuse he witnesses is ever shifting as he learns from the adults around him, but the narrative isn't strong enough to hold a character like this.

There are lines where I can see this struggle very clear. An intention just barely missed. I don't think authors are allowed grace about intentions when they are using a real life case of murder and torture as inspiration. In terms of what I think this book has done to audiences I'd say it's fucked up wanna be horror Collen Hoover with 10x better writing but just as bad execution of ideas.

This was my first book by this author, and while enjoyed his style everything was just a confusing tangle.

No one is gonna talk about the weird chemistry between her and her twin brother? How come he's like “my my sister sister look at you in your TUBE dress its such a TUBE” lots of tube talk. Can anyone explain that dress she wore to the dance? Like it had coat it didn't have a coat which was it? How realistic were the paper mache feet???? I hope that's how you spell that. This book was a hilarious whirlwind like how was that less than 200 hundred pages? LIKE HOW COME SHE HAD SO MUCH SEXUAL TENSION WITH HER BROTHER INSTEAD OF HER LOVE INTEREST.

I really wanted to like this book but it fell incredibly flat. Our main character is NOTHING. Her biggest moment of
gusto is sneaking off to a party. Beyond that instance, she has no desire, no interest in anything. Even her growing reliance on substances dull the story.

The mother takes too long to be interesting. By the time her character is developed enough for me to care about her, the plot hands her answers, and her daughter, via means of coincidence.

The writing itself was good, the plot and structure was bleh.

Deeply personal story to me, felt very connected to it.

Wish it was possible to rate a book as 3.8 or 3.5, the writing was incredible but the pacing of the last portion felt off. I also wasn't particularly moved by the letter at the end. It added to my dissatisfaction with how the end portion of the book was wrapping up.

The story starts so strong, so crafted with the time it's set in, that as the story progressed I missed the first half of the novel.