Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Date Me, Bryson Keller by Kevin Van Whye

12 reviews

mattyb's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective tense 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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Outing, Toxic relationship, and Homophobia

Moderate: Hate crime, Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, and Sexism

querciola's review against another edition

challenging emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Violence, Outing, Toxic friendship, Bullying, and Cursing

Moderate: Hate crime, Biphobia, Religious bigotry, and Emotional abuse

Minor: Infidelity, Cultural appropriation, and Injury/Injury detail

lonely_tardigrade's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Homophobia, Hate crime, Outing, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Religious bigotry and Stalking

Minor: Racism, Cultural appropriation, Car accident, Infidelity, and Pregnancy

matheo's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racial slurs, Bullying, Outing, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Bullying, Car accident, Cultural appropriation, Blood, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Abandonment, and Hate crime

merah's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing sad 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

3.5

This book reminded me of "Simon vs. the homo sapiens agenda". Especially the theatre aspects were familiar. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Homophobia, Misogyny, Outing, Toxic friendship, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, and Hate crime

Minor: Car accident, Cultural appropriation, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, and Racism

longlost's review

emotional inspiring 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

maybe im just a slut for the fake dating au trope but boy was this fun

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Bullying, Outing, Violence, Hate crime, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Racism and Cursing

Minor: Car accident and Cultural appropriation

nofunerals's review against another edition

emotional fast-paced

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

2.0

sigh. we really can‘t have nice things, can we?

this book was cute, i guess, the second half definitely stronger than the first. 

i reread the seven days manga a couple of days ago, just to get the original plot fresh in my head. tbh i wouldn’t even have read this book after i found out about the plagiarism, but i had already bought it.

first up i want to get a huge pet peeve of mine out of the way; a specific thing in the writing. sentences like „my being gay“ or „dad was fine with my driving his car“ are fine, but if i have to read one on almost every single page, i‘ll lose it. i know you can technically do that, it‘s all correct and everything; but it doesn’t mean you should.

it‘s too hot and i‘m too tired to write out everything in whole sentences, so here‘s a list of things that bothered me:

• what does the B in LGBTQ+ stand for? that‘s riiiight, bisexual! look it up, people like us exist, you know?
• literally what teenager texts like that
• (who even uses emojis unironically)
• how and why is every outing in this book forced / a choice made because of previous forced outing???
• the bryson that everyone knows and the real bryson are literally the same person? kai isnt the only one who gets to know bryson for real, there‘s literally no deeper level to his personality
• dear author, how can your „own voice“ be a literal plagiarism of an already existing story (written/illustrated by women of colour)? very fishy indeed…

okay, those are basically sentences, i apologize.

aside from the idea-stealing, the worst thing was definitely that the main character constantly debated whether bryson was gay or straight, as well as just assuming that his crush from the beginning was straight.

i‘m tired and angry and fucking hurt by being constantly erased.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Hate crime, Homophobia, Outing, and Violence

Minor: Alcohol, Biphobia, Car accident, Cultural appropriation, Physical abuse, and Racism

taelights's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5/5 stars
I'm not going to give this actual stars until I read the Seven Days manga and see if the plagiarism claims are actually true because I've seen people say they are and others that it's not so I rather make my own judgement before deciding the exact amount of stars I'd give this. But right now I'm going back and forth between 2 and 2.5 stars.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was a quick and entertaining read with an adorable love story. I loved the chemistry between Bryson and Kai and I thought their relationship was very cute. 

The writing style was a bit amateur. I realize it's the author's first book but out of a published book I would expect a slightly better writing style. I borrowed this from the library so it doesn't really matter much to me but if I had bought this I would be disappointed because I can find better quality writing on ao3 and there are plenty of fake dating turned real dating stories out there that I can enjoy for free that are of a better quality. So I would only recommend reading this book of you can get it from a library, if not I would pass. 

Also I saw someone else in the reviews mention this, but I also agree that the book seems too preachy about how oh love is love and people should be more accepting and oh this is what gay teens go through still and it sucks. But the type of people who read this type of story are either probably going to be gay themselves and know all this first hand or allies who are already accepting so it was a bit annoying to here the same message every few chapters. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Hate crime, Homophobia, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Biphobia, Infidelity, and Racism

Infidelity is not between the main couple, it's about a character's parents. Forced outing also occurred but for some reason that is not a content warning tag here. The main character mentions facing racism due to being mixed race but none is actually "on screen". Also biphobia/bi-erasure because Bryson is implied to possibly be bi when he was questioning his sexuality but it is never actually put into words if he discovers if he's bi or gay and i find that a bit sus....

thoroughlyenjoyedbooks's review

adventurous hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia, Biphobia, Bullying, Violence, and Hate crime

Minor: Racism and Car accident

anniepaigespages's review

emotional funny hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia

Minor: Bullying, Hate crime, and Violence