carleesi's reviews
744 reviews

Not my usual kind of book but I read it voraciously. Unlikeable protagonists piss me off but I think that Lucy is unlikeable in a very anxious millennial kind of way. I liked the slice of life kinda narrative of just getting a taste of what’s going right and wrong in her world without it necessarily having a big important narrative arc. HOWEVER

that bit with Danny at the end was absolute garbage and I do not understand the point of it. If that had happened earlier I would have stopped reading the book. Just nonsensical mood killer bs.

Great bite sized but very educational comics about a range of social justice issues. 

Living in Hope is part of the Truth Telling series from the deadly Running Water Community Press. In this book, Mr Frank Byrne shares his story as a survivor of the Stolen Generations. Mr Byrne was removed from his family at six years old, recounting this separation with painful clarity, before being sent to settlements and camps around Western Australia. Mr Byrne's story takes us along as he becomes a stockman and travels around the country growing his skills and building connections.  

I was especially moved by Mr Byrne describing the experience of reading his file. These files were kept on all Aboriginal people in WA, especially Stolen Generations survivors. It was used to track their whereabouts and very racist commentary on their lives. This file was started when Frank was 12 months old and reported to the authorities as a “half-caste” child. (The term half-caste is incredibly racist and should be avoided at all costs unless explicitly necessary. Mr Byrne includes a powerful explainer of why he uses the word in this book as someone against whom this word was weaponised.)

"But my file tells me nothing about me. It never mentions how I am going, not anywhere. It never comments if I am happy or sad... These people were my guardians, they took me from my family, who had no choice about it, and they never thought about how I was
 going as a little kid, or growing up, what I was good at, what I was like. Nothing.”

Goddamn Samantha Shannon can build a world… I was so hooked I could not put this down. I think reading the Priory of the Orange Tree first highlighted how much more her writing has developed since this book.

I also wish the protagonist wasn’t 19 considering her relationship with an immortal… feels a bit icky

I got over the amount I was forced to hear about the life of a racist murderer. The examples of racism felt a bit trauma porn/shock value-esque rather than storytelling.

Such a powerful reflection on motherhood and daughterhood

Honestly I was interested by the story but the way the characters talked about the blue skin thing felt like a clumsy allegory about racism. It was done so poorly that I did some reading about the book and the author and decided I didn’t need to finish it.

This particular brand of YA is not for me. The writing felt clumsy in that manic pixie dream girl kinda way, and everyone felt like a caricature. I had no urge to keep trying, just not for me!

I wasn’t very entertained by the book and never sought to listen to it. I think the vignettes were too small, it felt like I just started to understand someone and we’d moved onto the next.