From Kirkus: "Readers seeking a deep, uplifting love story will not be disappointed as the novel covers both flourishing feelings and bigger questions around belief and what happens when we face our own mortality. Main characters are black."

Nothing really pulled me in or captivated me about the book or story.
#ownvoices ( )

I feel bad giving it such a low rating but also like, the plot and the characters were so underdeveloped and the magical realism just felt awkward and it was really unrealistic (like, the last 40-ish pages especially) and it had the potential to be so much better than it was. It's hard to fall in love with a love story when the romance is between two vessels of history and backstory instead of two actual human beings. None of the characters had any depth at all-- there was the piece of shit mother and then literally zero other villains or people with ANY character flaws throughout the rest of the book. Also, the pacing was HORRIBLE. Like, literally so bad. Everything that I actually wanted to witness (like the diagnostic process or her finding out she was sick or any signs that she was sick, for example) was literally just... skipped. Like, imagine writing a story about someone who meets their true love, and then instead of telling the story of how they meet, skipping a few months ahead and being like "so these people met and now they are lovers." And then it spent like 80 years telling me about things I could not care less about that were totally irrelevant to the story. Oof. Bad. ( )

Recommended in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2021/03/29/new-books-by-genderqueer-breakouts/

fiction, young adult, LGBTQ+, 2SLGBTQ+, LGBT, romance, QTBIPOC, immigration, coming of age