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lauraevelyn's review
dark
sad
medium-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? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Bullying, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Medical content, Child abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, Alcohol, Vomit, Rape, and Body shaming
linguaphile412's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
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
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Abortion, Sexual assault, Blood, Sexual violence, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Miscarriage, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Self harm, Suicide, Medical content, and Alcohol
ladymirtazapine's review
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Abortion, Medical trauma, Medical content, Alcohol, Suicide, Vomit, Racial slurs, Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, Self harm, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, Child abuse, Bullying, Blood, Adult/minor relationship, and Abandonment
bethsbookshelf's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. This is what I consider to be an almost flawless book. It was just an incredible book and I'll be thinking about this for a long time.
This book follows Bess, age 15, who finds out she's pregnant with Boy's baby, the 'boyfriend' she hasn't spoken to in weeks. Immediately, I was into this book. Two main reasons: I am 32 weeks into my unexpected pregnancy (thankfully with my lovely husband, not a toxic boyfriend), but secondly, because I have been in a toxic relationship where I've been treated similarly to Bess (thankfully never ended up pregnant though!).
So right off the bat, I loved Bess for these reasons. I had empathy and sympathy for her situation, but she also took on her own story, with her fresh, young, funny, and honest voice. She has these intrusive thoughts, a beautiful narrative, and it's injected with humour and sadness from beginning to end.
On that note, the pace of this novel was just perfect. I was a little confused with the timeline at the beginning because it jumped around a lot from post-pregnancy test to pre-meeting-Boy and I couldn't really navigate it, but once I learned the style, the pace was perfect and I just flew through the book. I was never bored, and I am always scared of that being the case when the most exciting scene in the book is on the first page, but this book just got more and more exciting, dramatic and gripping to read about.
There were some really emotional and funny and sweet scenes. Then there was some really dramatic, dark and life-changing scenes. If I was crying-reader (I never really cry at books), this is the kind of book that would have me in tears. It's just so emotional and written so well. I actually think this would make an amazing film, and I know I would be in puddles of tears watching this on the screen.
The most emotional part about this for me was Bess' relationships with everyone around her. This book is the perfect example of how somebody who has complex relationships with everybody in their life doesn't necessarily mean that they're the problem. Bess is given an unlucky draw. She's had a horrible experience with her biological mother, she's now in foster-care with this quite unloving family, she has a tense but lovely relationship with her best friend Eshal and then she meets Boy, who is both charming and so toxic. Everybody treats her badly at some point, and she does, too, but you can still see that she's a good person, a product of her environment, and she's not the problem. She, in herself, is not toxic.
Speaking of the other characters, uh... they're incredible. They all have such poignant and proper character backstories. You don't leave this book wondering, "Why did that person act that way?" Every character gets time spent on them throughout the book. I especially loved Eshal's story. Her parents were wanting to arrange a marriage for her, and she obliged, but deep down, that wasn't what she wanted. The author managed this storyline well without white-washing or being stereotypical of Bangladeshi culture.
In fact, there were so many moments where I just wanted to snap my fingers and scream YAS with how the author dealt with racism in this book. The author is white, but has a cast of diverse characters and had clearly done her research. She managed to write about characters of colour without stereotyping or exhibiting unconciuos biases. And even though Eshal wanted to be obedient to her parents, she still was a normal teenager who broke rules and rebelled. She was also just a plain old badass. She was honestly one of the most fun characters to read about.
I also loved reading about Bess' foster family. They SUCKED. Like really, they sucked. On the outside, they took care of Bess, but inside, they projected their own shit onto Bess and it was so harrowing to read about. Definitely lots of instances of verbal abuse here, so if that stuff is triggering to you, be careful of these scenes.
However, Clarissa, Bess' foster sister was A QUEEEEEN. I don't normally like reading about children in books because authors make them so annoying and babyish but Clarissa was written so well. She was a realistic young girl who was observant, smart but still innocent. I loved when she brought Bess her lunch and it was cheese sandwiches, Wotsits and a Frube. Like come on, ya lil cutie, I love you.
Overall, the author really knew what she was doing when she wrote this book. And the writing was just incredible. It was like Sally Rooney meets typical British chick-lit, without being annoying or pretentious. In fact, I've probably never read an author with this voice. I loved the metaphors and similes and how they were used as intrusive thoughts from Bess so they didn't seem overdone or overdramatic; they were part of her journey and her mental health.
There were some really evocative and beautiful descriptions in this book and I just absolutely fell in love with so many lines.
I also loved the ending and how nobody got a perfectly happy ending, but the book ended in a moment where everybody was happy.
I'll now get into the spoiler section of my review, so if you haven't read the book, skip this part. However, I'll leave the rest of you with one more thought: I definitely recommend this book. If you're looking for something fast paced, emotional, feminist-driven, with strong female characters and a look into teenage pregnancy and the foster care system, this is something you'll enjoy.
The biggest spoiler and main talking point of this book is clearly what Bess decides to do with the baby.
I loved how the author dealt with this, making it the central plot of the book, without being too-overdramatic or repetitive. It's a trend right now to be really blase about abortions and ignore the mental and physical impact they have on women who choose abortions. "Abortion check" is genuinely a trend on Twitter.
I'm pro-choice but I also know the difficulty that must come with choosing to have an abortion. It's not an easy or light decision. Even those who know that this was the right thing to do, are often left with long emotional battles afterwards, for a variety of reasons, and if not, the physical side effects of having an abortion are also difficult.
Bess really explores every option available to her before choosing to get an abortion. She considers adoption, she considers keeping the baby, and at one point she tries to induce a miscarriage at Eshel's home (arguably the most emotional scene). As a teenager, I found all of this very realistic. The thought of being pregnant just eats away at you, it's all you think about, and there are a few lines in the book where Bess just wishes to rewind time and for this to never have happened - and that really induced sympathy and empathy in me. I just wanted to cry and give Bess a big cuddle.
I loved how the author showed that each decision she made had somebody behind it sort of pushing it on her. Even getting the abortion, she doesn't seem 100% sure if it's the right thing to do, but the other options seem even less right for her. And I think that's realistic for many women, too. It's not an easy decision. It might take years to be convinced if it was the right thing to do.
I think the author dealt with this very sensitively, and very realistically.
The only issue I had with these sections was a bit of medical terminology and medical jargon. Being pregnant myself, I know the different things that happen week by week. At week 9, Bess is still referring to the baby as a clump of cells. Now I understand why pro-choice people use this terminology, but it's also quite problematic for a few reasons.
1) We're all clumps of cells, technically speaking. But if we're talking about an aesthetic clump of cells, fetuses develop heartbeats around 6 and the clump of cells argument doesn't really work anymore.
2) I think the clump of cells phrasing is quite offensive to people who have dealt with infant loss. It must be really hard to hear another women describe what you've lost as a "clump of cells" when for you, it was a life forming, a future that you had fallen in love with.
So I was a little disappointed to see that terminology used here. The other thing was that the author didn't really seem to understand the size of a fetus at different stages of pregnancy. For example, Bess gets her abortion at around 12-14 weeks, and still struggles to see the baby on the scan pictures that the ultrasound technician printed out. Babies are quite big at this stage and are definitely noticeable on screen.
When Bess has her abortion and is bleeding, she talks about wondering if a certain blood clot is her baby but again at 12-14 weeks, the fetus is fully formed and I don't think, from what I've read, that it can really pass as a blood clot. Maybe the author did her research on this, but I did feel like some medical stuff was just passed over.
But overall, it didn't really hinder my read or anything. I just had some sensitivity & medical issues with some of the phrasing. But 99% of the book seemed the author had done her research and dealt with everything else super sensitively.
Even the scene where Boy rapes Bess. It is sad and horrible to read, but it wasn't overly detailed or sensationalized. Of course, I'd have liked to see some justice, but even now - let alone 1999 when this book was set - that rarely happens. So it was interesting to see how the author wrote about that while still making sure that Bess was empowered by herself and those around her.
This book follows Bess, age 15, who finds out she's pregnant with Boy's baby, the 'boyfriend' she hasn't spoken to in weeks. Immediately, I was into this book. Two main reasons: I am 32 weeks into my unexpected pregnancy (thankfully with my lovely husband, not a toxic boyfriend), but secondly, because I have been in a toxic relationship where I've been treated similarly to Bess (thankfully never ended up pregnant though!).
So right off the bat, I loved Bess for these reasons. I had empathy and sympathy for her situation, but she also took on her own story, with her fresh, young, funny, and honest voice. She has these intrusive thoughts, a beautiful narrative, and it's injected with humour and sadness from beginning to end.
On that note, the pace of this novel was just perfect. I was a little confused with the timeline at the beginning because it jumped around a lot from post-pregnancy test to pre-meeting-Boy and I couldn't really navigate it, but once I learned the style, the pace was perfect and I just flew through the book. I was never bored, and I am always scared of that being the case when the most exciting scene in the book is on the first page, but this book just got more and more exciting, dramatic and gripping to read about.
There were some really emotional and funny and sweet scenes. Then there was some really dramatic, dark and life-changing scenes. If I was crying-reader (I never really cry at books), this is the kind of book that would have me in tears. It's just so emotional and written so well. I actually think this would make an amazing film, and I know I would be in puddles of tears watching this on the screen.
The most emotional part about this for me was Bess' relationships with everyone around her. This book is the perfect example of how somebody who has complex relationships with everybody in their life doesn't necessarily mean that they're the problem. Bess is given an unlucky draw. She's had a horrible experience with her biological mother, she's now in foster-care with this quite unloving family, she has a tense but lovely relationship with her best friend Eshal and then she meets Boy, who is both charming and so toxic. Everybody treats her badly at some point, and she does, too, but you can still see that she's a good person, a product of her environment, and she's not the problem. She, in herself, is not toxic.
Speaking of the other characters, uh... they're incredible. They all have such poignant and proper character backstories. You don't leave this book wondering, "Why did that person act that way?" Every character gets time spent on them throughout the book. I especially loved Eshal's story. Her parents were wanting to arrange a marriage for her, and she obliged, but deep down, that wasn't what she wanted. The author managed this storyline well without white-washing or being stereotypical of Bangladeshi culture.
In fact, there were so many moments where I just wanted to snap my fingers and scream YAS with how the author dealt with racism in this book. The author is white, but has a cast of diverse characters and had clearly done her research. She managed to write about characters of colour without stereotyping or exhibiting unconciuos biases. And even though Eshal wanted to be obedient to her parents, she still was a normal teenager who broke rules and rebelled. She was also just a plain old badass. She was honestly one of the most fun characters to read about.
I also loved reading about Bess' foster family. They SUCKED. Like really, they sucked. On the outside, they took care of Bess, but inside, they projected their own shit onto Bess and it was so harrowing to read about. Definitely lots of instances of verbal abuse here, so if that stuff is triggering to you, be careful of these scenes.
However, Clarissa, Bess' foster sister was A QUEEEEEN. I don't normally like reading about children in books because authors make them so annoying and babyish but Clarissa was written so well. She was a realistic young girl who was observant, smart but still innocent. I loved when she brought Bess her lunch and it was cheese sandwiches, Wotsits and a Frube. Like come on, ya lil cutie, I love you.
Overall, the author really knew what she was doing when she wrote this book. And the writing was just incredible. It was like Sally Rooney meets typical British chick-lit, without being annoying or pretentious. In fact, I've probably never read an author with this voice. I loved the metaphors and similes and how they were used as intrusive thoughts from Bess so they didn't seem overdone or overdramatic; they were part of her journey and her mental health.
There were some really evocative and beautiful descriptions in this book and I just absolutely fell in love with so many lines.
I also loved the ending and how nobody got a perfectly happy ending, but the book ended in a moment where everybody was happy.
I'll now get into the spoiler section of my review, so if you haven't read the book, skip this part. However, I'll leave the rest of you with one more thought: I definitely recommend this book. If you're looking for something fast paced, emotional, feminist-driven, with strong female characters and a look into teenage pregnancy and the foster care system, this is something you'll enjoy.
I loved how the author dealt with this, making it the central plot of the book, without being too-overdramatic or repetitive. It's a trend right now to be really blase about abortions and ignore the mental and physical impact they have on women who choose abortions. "Abortion check" is genuinely a trend on Twitter.
I'm pro-choice but I also know the difficulty that must come with choosing to have an abortion. It's not an easy or light decision. Even those who know that this was the right thing to do, are often left with long emotional battles afterwards, for a variety of reasons, and if not, the physical side effects of having an abortion are also difficult.
Bess really explores every option available to her before choosing to get an abortion. She considers adoption, she considers keeping the baby, and at one point she tries to induce a miscarriage at Eshel's home (arguably the most emotional scene). As a teenager, I found all of this very realistic. The thought of being pregnant just eats away at you, it's all you think about, and there are a few lines in the book where Bess just wishes to rewind time and for this to never have happened - and that really induced sympathy and empathy in me. I just wanted to cry and give Bess a big cuddle.
I loved how the author showed that each decision she made had somebody behind it sort of pushing it on her. Even getting the abortion, she doesn't seem 100% sure if it's the right thing to do, but the other options seem even less right for her. And I think that's realistic for many women, too. It's not an easy decision. It might take years to be convinced if it was the right thing to do.
I think the author dealt with this very sensitively, and very realistically.
The only issue I had with these sections was a bit of medical terminology and medical jargon. Being pregnant myself, I know the different things that happen week by week. At week 9, Bess is still referring to the baby as a clump of cells. Now I understand why pro-choice people use this terminology, but it's also quite problematic for a few reasons.
1) We're all clumps of cells, technically speaking. But if we're talking about an aesthetic clump of cells, fetuses develop heartbeats around 6 and the clump of cells argument doesn't really work anymore.
2) I think the clump of cells phrasing is quite offensive to people who have dealt with infant loss. It must be really hard to hear another women describe what you've lost as a "clump of cells" when for you, it was a life forming, a future that you had fallen in love with.
So I was a little disappointed to see that terminology used here. The other thing was that the author didn't really seem to understand the size of a fetus at different stages of pregnancy. For example, Bess gets her abortion at around 12-14 weeks, and still struggles to see the baby on the scan pictures that the ultrasound technician printed out. Babies are quite big at this stage and are definitely noticeable on screen.
When Bess has her abortion and is bleeding, she talks about wondering if a certain blood clot is her baby but again at 12-14 weeks, the fetus is fully formed and I don't think, from what I've read, that it can really pass as a blood clot. Maybe the author did her research on this, but I did feel like some medical stuff was just passed over.
But overall, it didn't really hinder my read or anything. I just had some sensitivity & medical issues with some of the phrasing. But 99% of the book seemed the author had done her research and dealt with everything else super sensitively.
Even the scene where Boy rapes Bess. It is sad and horrible to read, but it wasn't overly detailed or sensationalized. Of course, I'd have liked to see some justice, but even now - let alone 1999 when this book was set - that rarely happens. So it was interesting to see how the author wrote about that while still making sure that Bess was empowered by herself and those around her.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, Rape, and Self harm
jamieleepilk's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
Bess is fifteen and pregnant, living with her foster family her life is turning upside down.
Gut punching and raw this isn't the easiest of read but it doesn't make it any less of a page turner.
From page one you instantly love Bess, you feel a need to look after a protect her.
You feel like screaming at her foster mother, the woman who is meant to love her and protect her. Her friendship with Eshal was so beautiful, the moments when she called her her soulmate made my heart incredible happy.
A story that is probably a mirror image for a lot of young girls in similar situations. Even with the dark subject matter ultimately this novel is so hopeful and you want to cheer Bess along. An incredible and though provoking debut from an exciting new talent.
Gut punching and raw this isn't the easiest of read but it doesn't make it any less of a page turner.
From page one you instantly love Bess, you feel a need to look after a protect her.
You feel like screaming at her foster mother, the woman who is meant to love her and protect her. Her friendship with Eshal was so beautiful, the moments when she called her her soulmate made my heart incredible happy.
A story that is probably a mirror image for a lot of young girls in similar situations. Even with the dark subject matter ultimately this novel is so hopeful and you want to cheer Bess along. An incredible and though provoking debut from an exciting new talent.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Medical content, Pregnancy, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Vomit
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