This is one of those books that makes you feel like you’ve just been run over by an enormous truck, in the best way possible. The amount of emotion packed into this book is overwhelming, and reading it is an amazing roller coaster ride. The writing style is snappy and immersive, and, while reading it, I felt transported into Jonathan’s world in the 70s. The future of LGBT-positive YA novels is bright, and it begins here. I think this will be one of the most important books of the year.

Please go read this right now!

Thank you to Penguin Random House for the ARC!!

5 stars - beautiful and weird in the best way possible

This book is recordbreaking (both in Most Sad Things To Happen While Still Making Me Feel Nothing and in Most Unnecessary Ellipses).

And if there are two things I abhor, it's books who are going out of their way to try to make me sad instead of, I don't know, making me care about the characters or the story so I'll feel sad by default, and books with annoying styles.

I wanted to like this very much, and as is I didn't hate it, but honestly I think that might be because I tried to read it at such a fast pace that I wouldn't have time to really think about it.

A favor to us all.

Bottom line: Not my cup of tea - an understatement of historical proportions.

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pre-review

yes, i'm reading another copy of a book from a publisher two years late. but this time it's groovy

(thanks to the publisher for the ARC)

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reading all books with LGBTQ+ rep for pride this month!

book 1: the gravity of us
book 2: the great american whatever
book 3: wild beauty
book 4: the affair of the mysterious letter
book 5: how we fight for our lives
book 6: blue lily, lily blue
book 7: the times i knew i was gay
book 8: conventionally yours
book 9: the hollow inside
book 10: nimona
book 11: dark and deepest red
book 12: the house in the cerulean sea
book 13: the raven king
book 14: violet ghosts
book 15: as far as you'll take me
book 16: bad feminist
book 17: a song for a new day
book 18: one last stop
book 19: to break a covenant
book 20: honey girl
book 21: check, please!
book 22: the subtweet
book 23: if we were villains
book 24: everything leads to you
book 25: you have a match
book 26: ziggy, stardust, and me

Heartbreaking and hopeful! I thoroughly enjoyed this story. And, learning about Two Spirit people—which I previously hadn’t heard of—was fascinating…much time Googling after finishing the book to learn more.

10 stars out of 5. Yes. You read that well.
I wish I could forget this book so I could later read it as if it was the first time. Absolutely lovely.

3.5 stars. This one took a little bit to get into, and I was more drawn into the second half of the book than the first half. The homophobia can be very difficult to read at times (as well as the racism). Not having lived during this time, I felt like it gave me a good snapshot of what life was like in 1973 and the issues that were prevalent (but I could be wrong on that).

Wypłakałam morze łez czytając.
Polecam bardziej audiobook niż książkę, gdyż dość ciężko się ją czyta przez zmiany w czcionce, masę dialogów itd.
Piękna książka, bardzo polecam.

James Brandon just ripped my heart out and stomped on it

The concept of this book really appealed to me. However, the concept was the only thing I enjoyed about it.

Speaking of heavily researched 70s lingo, I get it. This book took place in the 70s. I didn't need a reference every other paragraph. Especially not when that reference is "whambamthankyouma'am" a minimum of five times throughout the book. That is five times too many. It felt so unnatural and just seemed like the author was shoving the 70s in my face. Admittedly, I wasn't alive during that decade, but did people really say "sh-boogie" every time they cussed? Because that's the impression I got from this book of life in the 70s.

The writing style was nearly unbearable. If I hadn't been reading it to complete a tough prompt in a reading challenge, I would have DNFed after twenty pages. It was just so poorly written. I guess it was to show what was happening inside the mind of the main character, but it was constant! There were weird lists, SO many ellipses, fully capitalized sentences on nearly every page, and sometimes it seemed like the author just clicked "Enter" at random points in the middle of thoughts.

There was so much dialogue that I didn't feel like I ever got a mental image of the world because it was just constant talking.

I wish I could talk more about the plot of this book, but I was so distracted by the way it was written that I'm not sure I really took much else from it.