Reviews with content warning for Sexism - Every Word You Never Said

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Every Word You Never Said by Jordon Greene

11 reviews

asurasantosha's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.25

This is such a cute and enjoyable story. It's not trying to be super complex and despite the enriching inclusion of some difficult themes (homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc) it has a pretty rose-y attitude. I recommend it if you're looking for so.ething meaningful but light-hearted and sweet.

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kelliemw's review

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hopeful tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Like with the other stories in the “noahverse” a lot of character development happens off page. Things jump forward so quickly and that leaves much to be desired. The topics covered and the tropes used in the “noahverse” are all recycled quite a bit. The punk/rock friend who has a friend that hates that music. The nerdiness, especially marvel and Star Trek. The over use of the f slur both by bullies and the characters towards themselves.
Write what you know, but the repetitive nature of it is a bit much.

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nibs's review against another edition

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hopeful medium-paced

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

2.5

It was decent in the beginning, but the inconsistent handling of Skylar's communication as a non-speaking character was frustrating.
In the first half of the book Skylar mainly uses text to speech, but in the second half he shifts to more lip reading with some signing. The lip reading overrepresents how much you can understand from lip reading, particularly in low lighting. The lack of specificity of sign language was also frustrating - ASL uses a different grammatical structure than english, yet the characters would mouth english words at the same time as signing, implying they are using english sentence structure. Based on the acknowledgements, the author is not non-speaking, so I'd say more detailed research was needed to more accurately represent communicating as a nonspeaking person.

Ultimately, it was a cute gay YA book but it felt unpolished and rushed at times. The great parts of the book were overshadowed by rushed portions (and the communication stuff mentioned earlier). I did appreciate the realism of conservative US in the 2020s.

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milessmiles's review

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emotional funny hopeful reflective 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

3.75

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doggipet's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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stardustandrockets's review against another edition

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medium-paced

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

3.0

I had such high hopes for this book. I really did. Unfortunately it fell incredibly short. The whole time I was reading, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I didn’t like about it, but after reading lower rated reviews on StoryGraph, I figured it out thanks to people putting into words what I couldn’t.

The plot follows Skylar, a newly adopted nonverbal boy, who likes skirts and wears one to school. This sends the conservative Christians into a spiral because “boys in skirts are against God!” *eyeroll* This prompts a super sexist dress code proposal spearheaded by none other than Jacob’s toxically Christian father. All with the sub plot of romance between Skylar and Jacob. It's also a dual POV in 1st person which I didn’t love, but that’s not the book’s fault. I’m just not entirely a fan of 1st person.

Don’t get me wrong, this book was cute—in an extremely superficial way. The nonverbal rep is good, though you’re trying to tell me that people can lip read literally everything this boy says? When only about 30% of the English language is lip readable? Sounds fake, but okay. The only thing really diverse about this book is Imani, the Black pansexual witch. Though she’s written as the stereotypical Black sidekick which wasn’t great. I did like how Wicca was explained though. It was a nice contrast to the extreme of Christianity. The only other “diverse” characters were Jacob (a white, gay, rocker boy) and Skylar (a white, nonverbal, gay boy who likes wearing skirts). Otherwise there was zero diversity because cis-het white boys is the opposite of diverse. The characters were underdeveloped and all we got was surface level personality. Even the romance wasn’t developed well. It starts out as a love-at-first-sight slow-burn, which I absolutely love. However, everything gets thrown away after Skylar throws a tantrum and then guilt trips Jacob because he can’t read sign language well. So much of the development was off-screen and that was incredibly frustrating. And don’t even get me started on the amount of homophobia.

The toxic Christianity runs strong in this small North Carolina town and gods forbid you’re gay. The first time the f-slur was thrown around I almost rage quit the book. Then it was used again and again and again. Jacob even said something along the lines of “they can’t call me that slur, but I can use it on myself and that’s okay.” And like, I get reclaiming things that were once seen as slurs (i.e. queer), but I draw the line at the f-slur. Their classmates slinging it at them was bad enough. There was also one use of the r-slur by Skylar towards himself and that wasn’t okay either. I get that he’s extremely traumatized from years in bad foster/group homes, but never once did a character on-page ever call him that. So I felt it was extremely uncalled for.

Overall there was a lot more telling than showing and it made for a clunky reading experience. There was supposedly a conversation about sex between love interests that we only find out about because Skylar mentioned it, and there were a lot of random time skips (which is fine, but not when important stuff happens and we find out after the fact). Would I recommend this book? No. It had so much potential and it fell incredibly flat. For me, the only redeeming quality is the cover. Not even the conflict was satisfying because

they failed. Then the decision was overturned after the fact by the NC Supreme Court. So what was the point?

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cappuccino_yuki_teddy's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
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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anniereads221's review against another edition

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challenging emotional slow-paced

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shelby9's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted 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? Yes

4.75

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icarusandthesun's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring medium-paced

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

3.0

I'm not looking for your voice. I'm aiming for your heart.

Queer romance, a non-verbal character, boys in skirts, a screw-you to heteronormativity, a breathtaking extra cover under the dust jacket? Uh, yes please!

When I saw Jordon Greene's Instagram post featuring the gorgeous extra cover for the hardback version, I was GONE. Pre-ordered it on the spot, because how could I resist??

But I stayed for the funny pop-culture references, the diverse cast of characters, cute romance and the important message that CLOTHES DON'T HAVE A GENDER.

I was positively surprised just how refreshingly creative this book was, with so many unique ideas, including Skylar being non-verbal, the dress-code and gender/clothes debate, someone actually being in a band, adoption, being Wiccan (!!!) and so forth. It's really nice to see so many groups and things represented and richly educational and mind-expanding as well.

But sadly there were also a few things I wasn't really fond of. One of them being the language - the slang, the use of pop-culture. It was brilliant at times and some passages really made me laugh, but some of it also felt very over the top. That is only a personal thing though, because I'm positive there are actually teenagers who talk like that, just not my friends and I, which made it a bit uncomfortable at times.

Skylar is a very insecure boy, having been pushed around and abandoned and abused. I get experiences like that leave marks on a person (duh), but wow, the insecurity in this book made his character kind of unlikeable. Obviously there's drama in the book, Sky and Jacob having a fight, because that's just how romances go. But the reason was so ??? Jacob wasn't ready to go full-on relationship mode with "I love you"s and stuff after literally two weeks and Sky got mad, pushed him away and then JACOB had to apologize and do some grand romantic gesture to win him back when he did nothing wrong. That made me mad, like crazy mad. I get being insecure, but it's something you yourself have to work on and if it affects your relationship with other people, it's something YOU have to try to fix, because no one can do it for you.

And lastly, and this contains spoilers for the characters Seth and Imani -

I thought their relationship felt forced. Sure, it was hinted at throughout the book, but I still really hoped it wouldn't happen. Because they're best friends and I didn't feel any romantic chemistry between them. I would've loved for them to just stay best friends because that's their whole dynamic. Not everyone needs a relationship at the end of the book for the book to be good and for the characters' lives to be fulfilled. Idk, it just felt forced.

Still a great book though, I enjoyed it a lot and I'm looking forward to reading more Jordon Greene in the future.

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