Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit

Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

14 reviews

addy_starfish_berkeley's review against another edition

4.5

emotional funny hopeful medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

charliebee03's review against another edition

4.0

emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Took me 6 years to start reading this book. Had to get through the first chapter before really getting into the story, but after that I was hooked. I think this was quite a realistic storyline and the characters and their traits and behaviours did not feel over the top or forced. I like that Jo made some friends in Rome rather than the plot being that she had no friends other than Mary Carlson. B.T.B was a lovely character and made me smile in every scene he was in. I enjoyed the relationship between Jo and Mary Carlson, and appreciate that Mary Carlson did not simply accept Jo's apology immediately, and instead took time to evaluate what it was she wanted in life regarding the relationship. I also appreciated that Jo's dad recognised his mistake in asking her to hide her sexuality.

Content Warnings

neverly's review against another edition

1.0

I'm mad that such a good title and beautiful cover went to this book.

That's not a good review, but it's a wonderful TLDR.

There are many issues I had with this book. Starting with, as other reviewers have mentioned, an ableism problem. I do not have the words to properly express what is wrong with how the disabled character (B.T.B.) is written in this book, and I am certain that there are other reviews on this site (or others) which express the issue better than I can. In short, he is only there to face ableism (which is never meaningfully addressed), occasionally provide support to the MC, or be conveniently forgotten when it's not a convenient time. It's gross, and the way he is presented in this story left a sour taste in my mouth. Would not recommend to anyone sensitive to ableism.

The MC herself was also atrociously annoying. In general unappreciative of the people around her and rather rude, and not in a way that felt constructive to the narrative. The narrative justifies this behavior, even. She also has a problem with women. Almost all the women in this story are presented through the MCs eyes as shallow, boy-crazy, or bitchy. What? You could argue that this is to show how "different" the straight women are from our MC, but even the other WLW characters in the story are treated poorly. Could hardly stand it.

If those two things are not enough to throw down my personal rating of this book to hell, it reads like a revenge fantasy written by a 15 year old who's seen one too many tumblr textposts. The dialogue was so bad and cringe-worthy that it almost distracted me from the glaring issues in the book. Every single inner monologue the character has made me want to skip ahead, and the conversations between the teens in the story? Actually comically unrealistic. Maybe there's some niche of the world where talking like this is natural, but having grown up around some people who were rather religious, this reads closer to an r/Atheism view of religious teenagers than what they are actually like.

Over all a mess of a novel, and one which would have benefitted from edits concerning the way B.T.B. was treated in the book. I am willing to forgive cringy-ness and I am willing to ignore some unrealistic dialogue, but the way he is written is just... unpleasant. I understand that some people liked this story, and liked its romance. But the issues that lie in B.T.B.'s characterization and the treatment of the other side characters was not something I was able to ignore.

Content Warnings

breezie_reads's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 18%

1. The ableism in this book is disgusting. You can have an autistic character without infantilizing them. And it IS autism, not Aspergers. If the author had done any research into a disability she wanted included in her book, she would have known that. But the autistic character wasn't there because she wanted queer AND disability representation. The autistic character was there for character development of everyone else and so we could see who the nice people were and who the mean people were.

2. I have an issue sometimes with people who middle-aged and older writing young adult novels about teenagers because 9 times out of 10, they don't know what they're doing when they're writing these teenaged characters and they come off as completely unbelievable. No teenager talks like that or acts like that.

3. Insta-attraction is a no-go for me. Almost always an immediate DNF.

Content Warnings

ahguhguh's review against another edition

1.5

lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

scarhatesjeffybezos's review against another edition

2.25

relaxing medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

nicolinebl's review against another edition

3.75

challenging emotional funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. As someone who is very far away from Christianity (was one when I was young tho) it felt a bit preachy at the start of the book. I honestly found Jo a bit annoying because of how preachy and holier than thou she sounded.

But honestly, it's been a while so I had to get used to that. And when I got over myself, I quite enjoyed the book. Look, Dana was an a very annoying best friend imo. The homophobic people from Georgia weren't the greatest either (fuck Jessica!). But my goodness, I loved BTB, Mary Carlson & George. Not everything about this was the greatest like the plot basically being her having to hide her gay which just gives us some miscommunication and lying to have a plot. But I enjoyed the ride.

Content Warnings