Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Pageboy by Elliot Page

104 reviews

subbasileia's review

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0


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hellokira's review

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adventurous

4.5


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marmaladereads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
This book is... ooof.

I love Elliott Page's work and I love him no less for having read this book, but I probably would not recommend this to other queer readers. This is an incredibly difficult, depressing, and mostly tragic story of mental illness struggle, how cruel society is towards queer and trans people, and a first hand account of why trans people have such a high rate of mental illness and suicide. 

There is an incredible amount of explicit, graphic on page homophobia, transphobia, and abuse in this book.

It's highly relatable, well written, and feels incredibly true, but also made me feel sad and scared about the state of the world, and I have quite enough of that in my life already, tyvm.

Do check the content warnings before reading. 

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laughingrecord's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

3.5


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clarelou07's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

  • The chapters feel like short stories, scattered throughout Elliot's life
  • There is a lot about sex and relationships (which makes sense given Page's coming out as gay paving the way to be himself). However, there are some sex scenes from their younger years which read as sexual abuse. Beware if this is a trigger.
  • As a Southern queer nonbinary person, Elliot's reflection on sexuality and gender was refreshing to read. I wish the world were kinder to exploration like this, and I'm happy Page exists publicly to share his story.
  • While wanting to love this, the book was okay for me. I'm generally not a memoir person, but wanted to give this a shot. 

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cryptidrea's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

4.25


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lukests's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0


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abicaro17's review

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dark emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

2.75

So the actual story is really compelling about heartbreaking but, like most memoirs I read, is jumbled and feels unfinished. This book would have benefited with a chronological order format or at least naming the year each story was in. Page uses ages as time markers and as someone who has no idea how old they are, it was confusing. Page also throws in lots of random info that doesn't contribute to the story, like info about landmarks or anecdotes about childhood musings. The parts of the story that felt relevant and composed, like Page's tumultuous relationship with their dad or growth in relationships, added reflection and complexity that's desperately needed in this book. I wish I liked this more because learning about Elliot Pages story was so engaging (plus I love them!) but, this book was a little too all over the place for my taste. 

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trinidaddy's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0


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mychemegan's review

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sad slow-paced

2.5

It's hard to rate memoirs and I think Elliot has the right to share his story however he feels best represents what he has to say. But in my opinion this book fell really flat. I felt that it would have benefited from a linear storyline and found jumping from one age to another without any indication of doing so really confusing and disjointed. I also just felt that it lacked introspection. We heard incredibly graphic depictions of homophobia, abuse, and his sexual exploits, but it felt like we got the pain without the resolution or growth from it. And hey, maybe that is where he's at in his life! Maybe he is still processing all this pain and still has growing and reflection to do. I guess I just struggled with /why/ he wrote the book. I can see how it would be cathartic for him to let all this out, but I'm not sure what the reader has to gain from it. Overall, I appreciate that he shared his story and I'm glad I read it, it just really left me wanting more in the bad way.

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