cass_lit's reviews
1432 reviews

This is a reread from when I first read it in August 2020. Sadly, I am shocked that all the political commentary is relevant again today, but I’m not surprised to find that the white feminism lessons are. I think this is important to continue to come back to periodically to make sure I’m being as inclusive as possible in my allyship. 

Admittedly, I’m pretty ignorant of the Kent State shootings — made even more terrible because I’m from Ohio. All I knew going into this is that it happened because of a Vietnam War protest, and I’ve seen the famous photo of the immediate aftermath. 

This book is obviously directed at a younger reader than me, but was perfect for my starting knowledge point. I liked that, while the “opposing” viewpoints were still given, they were immediately rebuked by one of our student narrators. I loved the Black narrator’s viewpoint as well, as I really didn’t have any idea of that respect. 

Despite its intended audience, I’d highly recommend this (very short) book to anyone looking to get a brief, but not too narrow, overview of what happened at Kent State on May 4, 1970. 

I loved everything about this. I loved Lily and Nick separately and as a couple. I loved both sisters and the relationship between the three of them, and am so excited to learn this a series following all of them. I loved the two of them fall for each other in emails before ever meeting and knowing each other — it will forever be my favorite romance trope. I loved that they’re both in the book world, and I wish Nick’s book was real so I could read it too. 

I’m so excited to continue with Violet’s book next, but I can’t imagine how it’ll compete with this one for me.

It’s no secret that Ta-Nehisi Coates is a fantastic writer, and The Message is a favorite of so many’s for a reason. This book’s events are from a few years ago, yet are even more relevant today than ever. 

I wanted to love this, and the premise seemed to tackle a lot of issues I care about and think are important. Unfortunately the execution fell a little flat for me only because I think it tried to do too much — there were so many narrators and so much time lapsed throughout the entire book. I found myself enjoying each individual narrator (except Juba) but would hate when it switched back to the collective The Children (who by the end were no longer children). Because we were so focused on Thula, I would’ve much preferred we switch back to her for those times… especially since we were reading her letters much of those chapters anyway. 

And while I liked getting to know these characters over a long time, I feel like we sacrificed a lot of the actual details and struggles (and wins, even if lesser in number) in order to cover such an expansive time frame. We’d gloss over things that seemed important and things that obviously were important because they kept being talked about years later. 

Lastly, I’ll just warn that this book is bleak, and not necessarily hopeful. All of the content you expect to be in here is — the harm of chemicals and big oil on human health and the environment; colonialism; police brutality; etc. However, there’s also a lot of other mentions of things that are not ever addressed (sexual harassment, rape, gender roles, homophobia, etc) — I *think* they’re just mentioned because they’re real life and those issues don’t stop just because there are bigger issues affecting you as well. But for those to be mentioned and never reckoned with didn’t leave a great taste in my mouth when looking back on the book as a whole. 

I think I just expected this book to be focused on the environmental degradation, with the public health and colonialism being inseparable from the problem. Instead, the main fight because against all that Big Oil stood for, and the environmental effects were pushed to the very back burner. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book by any means, but rather that I didn’t get out of it what I expected to. 

Loved this. Only complaint is I wanted more. This world is fascinating and these characters are so compelling!

This was out of my comfort zone but it was great. Loved the characters, loved the setting, loved the politics.

I liked this.  There wasn't a lot going on, which isn't normally my style -- but I surprisingly didn't mind.  It's short and I read it quickly. I don't think it'll stick with me long but I enjoyed my time reading it.

I really enjoyed this.  I think there were some plot holes and I don't fully understand what was going on, but I loved the setting and the magic enough to ignore all of that. 

For someone who hated normal people with a fiery passion (everything about it) - I am shocked that I enjoyed this as much as I did.  It took me a while to get into it because I started out hating every single character and being in their minds was miserable, but somewhere along the line I started to actually feel for them and was suddenly invested in them and their stories.