Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Rise to the Sun

Rise to the Sun is Leah Johnson’s sophomore novel. There’s a lot of good to it! For example, there’s a wide variety or representation in parental backgrounds and friendship dynamics. All the characters are interesting enough, and I really enjoyed the musical festival setting – why aren’t there more music festival settings in books? Lets make it a thing. Still, Rise to the Sun is not as strong of a book as You Should See Me in a Crown and I’d like to dig into “why”.

At its base, Rise to the Sun is still an entertaining book and 100% worth reading – please don’t let anything in this review throw you off. I never considered DNF’ing this book, not once. It’s more that, while reading, I found myself disappointed that the protagonists and dynamics did not live up to the high bar set in You Should See Me in a Crown. Johnson wrote Rise to the Sun amidst the pandemic, and as such, it’s fair to expect a different experience – I think all of us were high affected by the last couple years, and we should be kind to others.

The fundamentals are this: it feels like a lot of the plot and characters are still trapped in Johnson’s head. There’s a lot of movement and a lot less subtlety in this novel than her previous one, and as a result, I found myself having to pause and figure out who was speaking and where they were and what was going out. I think one of the challenges here was that this book is a dual POV – something new for the author. As a single POV, I believe we would have been able to get to adequately know Toni or Olivia, get on board with their motives and learn their histories. Otherwise, the book could have been longer to give each of the protagonists room to breathe.

I mentioned earlier that I loved the setting – I did! There’s so much going on at festivals like that and they are so much fun. It’s the type of setting that can really come to life. In some places, it did! I really would have liked to see more integration into the festival, the adrenaline and the music. With the exception of one set, we only heard about the concerts and silent discos and so forth. I want to say that we spent too much time inside the characters’ heads instead of enjoying the setting, but that’s not true, either. It comes back to the fact that the book should have been longer to meet its full potential. Too much going on to give any one thing justice.

Speaking of “too much going on”, lets talk about the plot. A lot of things going on here on a few different levels – the growing romantic relationship, the thing Olivia is running from, getting all the apples, Toni’s quest to find her path, winning the Golden Apple, Olivia and Imani’s friendship. There are also another couple events that occurred in the course of the story that could have been a spinoff subplot. Again, we find ourselves backed in a corner with a lot of problems to solve and very little time to solve them. The romantic relationship takes the most space, but even then, it’s clunky. Another example of wishing it was a longer book. In particular, I’m frustrated that Imani never got to go on the Ferris Wheel.

There are a lot of little things to nitpick about Rise to the Sun, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the same cause – this book either needed one POV, or it needed to be a little longer to allow things to develop a bit more. It’s entertaining and it’s nice to see all the rep and I love the setting. It’s a very readable book, and not unenjoyable, but it wasn’t all it could have been.

Content Warnings

thesapphiccelticbookworm's review

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring slow-paced

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

3.75

Content Warnings

betweentheshelves's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional hopeful 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

3.5

I have mixed feelings about this book. It didn't grab me like <i>You Should See Me in a Crown</i> did, but this is also a different story and a totally different kind of book. Yes, there was still a great romance and I loved that aspect of the story. Leah Johnson is great at writing character. Maybe I just wasn't a huge fan of the setting? I don't know! I'll have to give it more thought.

There were some plot points that I also didn't think were really needed for this particular story. I would have been fine with the book just focusing on Toni and Olivia's relationship and how it evolved over the weekend. The rest of the stuff going on with the festival kind of took away from that, and I wish that it hadn't.

Content Warnings

melaniereadsbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

4.0

This was a fun and cute contemporary that dealt with some deeper topics! I really enjoyed Olivia as a character. She very much morphs her own personality to the people she is around which is so relatable, but I love that she decides to just be herself throughout the events of this book and the way it pays off for her. Great, cute, sapphic, coming of age novel!

Content Warnings

turtlebrainlibrarian's review

Go to review page

adventurous 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

3.5

Content Warnings

delz's review

Go to review page

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Rise to the Sun is a sweet story that takes place at a weekend long concert, Farmland Music & Arts Festival. Olivia drags her best friend, Imani for the weekend to get away from a decision she needs to make, back home, but she simply wants to forget. Toni has been coming to the festival most of her life, but since tragedy struck her family she wasn’t sure coming was the right decision. Toni brings her best friend Peter, he’s been the only person she’s let into her life for a while, until she meets Olivia. Olivia has secrets, Toni has secrets, but they just might learn to trust each other. The entire story takes place in one weekend, woven around a music festival. It’s sweaty and dirty, it’s loud and colorful and it romanticizes the experience of being in a shared space, with a love of music along with thousands of other people. You kind of live vicariously through the characters enjoying live, large concerts.

Content Warnings

patches's review

Go to review page

lighthearted relaxing 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

4.0

This is an absolutely enjoyable book that takes place over the course of a weekend music festival. It follows Olivia and Toni in alternating chapters as they start out as unassuming strangers to growing to know each other's hopes, fears, and aspirations.

In short, this books is wonderful.

I absolutely loved how we start the book as the characters do, strangers to each other. The characters are a bit distant, but as the story goes on and the characters begin to trust each other, we also gain that trust and learn what it is that brought them to this meeting and how events in their lives have shaped and changed them.

This is a really light read for the most part, while there are mentions of shootings, death, and wrongful spreading of images, they aren't discussed too in depth. This book could easily be read in a day, and it would absolutely be a day well spent with these wonderful and complex characters. While I haven't had the chance to read You Should See Me in a Crown, this book has definitely convinced me to read more of Leah Johnson's writing.

Content Warnings

themixedpages's review

Go to review page

hopeful medium-paced

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

2.75

Content Warnings

More...