Reviews with content warning for Death - Stay Gold

Reviews tagging 'Death'

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

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challenging fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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ian_loves_dragons's review

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dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

The main cis-trans romance in this book could be described as “why I’m t4t,” except we’re supposed to root for them to be together

-sincerely, a frustrated trans person

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whosfernn's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I knew almost nothing about this book when I picked it up. Looking at the cover and the blurb, I assumed it would be a cute coming-of-age romance. What it actually is is probably the best, most moving tale of a trans boy I've ever read. It's a very realistic look at the trans experience, especially how it can be to be trans in southern America. Beautiful. One of my favourites, probably my favourite read of 2023 so far. Please read this book.

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journey2's review

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Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

Sometimes I need to take my own advice. If you are not loving a book...it's okay to quit it. And you probably should.
But I wanted to see how it ended.

~☆~ minor spoilers~☆~

Stay Gold was not a good read for me. I found this book frustrating. The characters annoyed me and everyone seemed extremely superficial.

Pony is relentless about the "friend zone" thing with Georgia. She continues to say no to his advances and he continues to pursue. Yes, she likes him, but she has clearly said no and he will not give up and keeps asking for more; including love bombing her with a grand gesture, until he can eventually win her over.

Our main love interest, Georgia, is so obsessed with her image and social standing right til nearly the end and her change of heart is supposed to be endearing, but by the time we got there I was just so tired of how fake she was.

I know that in high school everybody's figuring out who they are and who they want to be, but absolutely every character was so fake and two dimensional. In the end, superficial apologies and excuses like "it's just locker room talk" etc seem to 'fix' every off-colour comment or remark. Pony's dad was absolutely horrible to him throughout the entire book and his mom was kind of just complacent and didn't fight for him. A couple sentences at the very end of the book are supposed to redeem him but they just felt forced. Even though lots of things ended up being happy or at least happier, I found this book extremely problematic, frustrating and annoying and I do not recommend it.

I'm curious as to what the purpose of the storyline about Pony's job served. It didn't really go anywhere except to allow Pony to be nosy and intrusive into somebody else's business and then he got to have a warm fuzzy feeling afterwards. On that note, Pony continued to stick his nose into business that is not his own and it was very annoying. There was a time when Pony and Georgia stuck their noses into something so personal that I actually took time away from the book because I was exasperated. He was rewarded for it eventually, but it was annoying to read.

This book was 100% not for me and was just completely filled with red flags.
I could go on, but I won't!

Also it's list of trigger warnings is a mile long

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cheezyreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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whiptaill1z's review

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

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anniereads221's review

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challenging emotional medium-paced

3.0

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duskangelreads's review against another edition

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inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This debut was mostly enjoyable and I did end up rating it 3.5 stars. Though there is one bigger issue I had with it that didn’t really get addressed in the book.

So let’s talk about it first! My issue is one of the side characters, Max, who is best friends with our main character, Pony, & both of which are trans boys. Max throughout most of the book is continually trying to force Pony to come out at Pony’s new school where no one knows he is Trans. Max is an advocate of sorts for the Trans community and is trying to push Pony to join him but in doing so it might raise questions & Pony is not ready to come out as trans. This is a common thing unfortunately but the thing that pisses me off is that it’s not rectified. After Pony does choose to come out they just go back to being best buds… He is never called out. No one even acknowledges that it’s not cool what Max is doing. He doesn’t really apologies and that really grinds my gears. It’s the same thing as Leah from Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli all over again.

Besides that it was quite a fun read which deals with some heavy topics in a realistic & inspiring way. This does follow dual POV between Georgia & Pony as well which I always enjoy if done right. Georgia & Pony both had unique voices & both were enjoyable to read from.

Georgia did has some internal issues but those were all thought through and she developed nicely as a character coming to terms with what’s going on around her. I feel like some people might not be a fan of her for the choices she made and I get it. I don’t agree with her actions and if I was friends with her in high school I would definitely call her out for it. Though I’m also not that far out of high school really and can see how between being faced with everything + being a cheerleader in high school where everyone is judgy little assholes would make it hard to come to terms with what was going on instantly. It makes for a realistic character. She also learnt & grew as a character and realised that her actions were wrong. Which is what is important in character growth for me.

Pony also developed throughout the book, though I did find his POV a little flat in comparison to Georgia for some reason. He was a very enjoyable character and though I can’t speak for the representation directly I did see the similarities between his experiences and most high school experiences as an LGBTQ+ person, like myself.

Overall, I don’t think Max needed to be the way he was or even present in the story. As no one from Pony’s school knew the bloke he was kind of pointless to the narrative in general so…. Enough about that though. I would recommend giving this one a read out of Tobly McSmiths’ two novels. Besides Max it was quite enjoyable, inspiring, fast paced & the audiobook is quite well done!

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