Adam

Oh Lucy, I hate you almost as much as I understand you

I hated reading this almost as much as I loved it and that is exactly where this book’s greatness lies in. All of the characters are unbearable, starting by the narrator: June is a racist who excuses her behaviour by reminding herself that she’s a liberal, although she takes her hype from conservatives without a care in the world. She’s a jealous, troubled and two-faced woman who truly believes that she has done no wrong and that the only reason she hasn’t succeeded yet is that she is a white woman. What other solution is there than to steal her dead Chinese-American frenemy’s story and make it her own?

It is absolutely unbearable: how could someone be so deluded and ignorant? We are plunged into her perspective and keep reading more and more of the twisted lies she tells and ends up believing. To add insult to injury, June is surrounded by people who comfort her in her problematic views and defend her against those who dare question her authorship and allyship. Though maybe defend is too strong of a word, because they are all quick to abandon June once she is well and truly cancelled.

This is a callout of the publishing industry’s racism and misogyny, but also of its hypocrisy. No one is good, everyone is a shark who would throw a « friend » under a train to get a book-deal. Of course, we can’t forget about the book community and its hunger to find things that are wrong, to dissect a person or their work until it is nothing more than a grotesque imitation which they can nitpick and cut into pieces.

Truly, this was a wonderful book with a compelling story and complex, layered characters which offers a necessary criticism of the literary world.

My main issue is that we were spoon-fed every piece of information. The thinking was pre-chewed for us readers and we only had to open our mouths and swallow R. F. Kuang’s opinions. That is not to say that I don’t agree with them, simply that I believe some things should be left for readers to mull over and form their own beliefs about.

I'm giving this book 1,5 stars because it was entertaining and I absolutely adored the synopsis when I first read it but I can't in good faith rate it better than that. I just can't. First of all, I was excited to read a trans book by a trans author because I thought it would include good representation of the trans experience. Why would I not, right? Well, I was thoroughly disappointed. Absolutely none of this resonated with me and while, of course, everyone lives through different things,—it pains me to say this but it has to be said—to me, this is such a cis person's view of transgender people. Charlie is a high schooler with top surgery, hormones, a name change, presumably a gender change too if the school's administration has no idea that he's transgender (and accomplished all of that within a year, if the book is to be believed). What? In which country does he live for this to be allowed? Please do let me know, I'd love to visit. He seems to be quite dysphoric but all of those moments are depicted like him embarrassing himself, why? Also, he's so worried about transphobia if he gets discovered but there isn't a single person who reacts negatively. And I'm all for it, really, I think it's great to have stories about trans characters without them experiencing discrimination, but in this case it kind of negates the point of the story. All in all, this was cliché.Was it a conscious decision from the author to appeal to the (cisgender) masses? If that's the case, it's sad, a bit of a stab in the back to the trans community. Most likely, Powars simply wanted a world where trans people have an easier time, which I can understand, but then he shouldn't have used fear of bigotry as Charlie's reason for going stealth. More of a focus on his initial resentment towards Jasper would have done the trick and made more sense. Speaking of nonsensical, I couldn't tell you how many almost-plot-holes are in this thing... You know the kind of things that make you furrow your brows and think to yourself « But how the fuck? »? Yeah, that. It's the kind of thing that really hinders my enjoyment of a book (but some people are not too bothered by it, if that's your case, go ahead and ignore this part). If Charlie is supposed to have beat thousands of other students for this scholarship , how come he's struggling to keep up? I understand the adjustment period but after that, it should have been a breeze, considering we weren't told about any teachers hating him or anything like that. And despite being a genius, he can't write poems or love letters? On the other hand, this school had not one, but two extremely famous fifteen (sixteen?) year old poets. Again, I'd love to live in whatever country where this kind of things happen. Poets (or authors in general) don't get millions of followers, especially not when they can't post anything for six months at a time. Even more unbelievable were the characters. The main characters were bad enough, but the side characters... Simply put, the author tried to make them quirky by assigning them each one personality trait and multiplying it by a thousand. Which gets us characters from children's books, not real people. It was supposed to be funny, I suppose, but it fell flat. Finally, I don't believe that Charlie and Jasper are in love and if my mind can be changed on other things, that's one hill I will die on. Where's the chemistry? Where's the bonding, the emotional connection, the understanding, the deep discussions? I didn't even believe in the hurt leftover from their summer camp, if I'm being honest. I wanted to root for them to get together, I did, but I felt like even Charlie and Luis had more chemistry. Other reviews said it better than me but I think this was a lot of great ideas tied together with dental floss.