TBR 9/11/23

A gut punch of a YA interracial love story. Woodson writes beautifully, as always, and knows how to wallop you right in the feels. ( )

somehow this is just so beautifully written. i don't even know what it is about it, but it's just lovely. this is a beautiful little book, that is much more powerful than it seems like it should be. and somehow, in spite of the world we live in, i didn't see the ending coming.

(and the audio readers were both excellent. i particularly liked the reader for jeremiah, but they both were so very good.) ( )

4/7/22

You know how sometimes the question goes around about the one book you'd want everyone to read?

This is it. This is my choice.

I first read this book in middle school and have never forgotten the impact it had on me. During this reread, I wasn't just reading it through an adult lens, but through the lens of my 13-year-old self.

Even though this time I knew what happens, this book punched me just as much as it did so many years ago. Woodson's utterly poetic writing pulls you in, wraps you tightly, makes your emotions soar, and drags them back down again.

This book deals with so many identities and dynamics: race, Jewishness, queerness, money, divorce, family, growing up, fitting in, the ways they all intersect. It explores so many relationships, multiple dimensions and types of each: siblings, parent/child, romantic couples, friends.

The more I think about it, the more I realize just how formative this book was to my younger self, especially on the stupidity and senselessness and wrongness of racism. Even when I was 13, I recognized the reality of the book's ending. I hated it, wished the story could have ended differently, but never did I think it wasn't realistic. And that's what bothered me the most. That's what still bothers me, because the depictions of racism are still staggeringly relevant today.

Woodson wrote a devastatingly impactful book that should be required reading for everyone. ( )