Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Honey Girl

haven’t cried bc of a book in such a long time but this got me multiple times, it hit hard and real in so many small places. it’s well written and the characters felt like real people that i wanted to meet

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fromjuliereads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring 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? Yes

4.5

Wow. I absolutely loved this book. An incredible debut. I read this book quite quickly. It was such an enticing read. I loved the characters - their strengths, their flaws, their relationships. It was a difficult read at some points. It brought up some personal things for me. While I could never, ever fully relate to Grace and the racism she experiences, the familial issues she has, I fully related to so many of her struggles with perfectionism and anxiety. I laughed, I cried. I would highly recommend this book.

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thebakerbookworm's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

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

2.5

I wanted to like this book, but alas, it was just not for me.

My main issue was with the characters. For a character-driven novel, there is hardly any character development and most of the side characters don't even move into being complex characters. We get a lot of depth from Grace, which is great, but by the end of the book I was still unsure if she'd actually grown over the course of the story. You'd expect that we'd get depth and development from the love interest, Yuki, but nothing. I found Yuki to be a super interesting character, but we still know hardly anything about her by the end—her family, her backstory, how she got into radio, how she met her roommates, how she fell in love with Grace.

Even why she stuck by Grace at the end. I kept thinking, "Grace has no right to expect that Yuki just hung around waiting for her," yet it turns out that's exactly what Yuki did and we are never told why.

The most depth we get from a side character was Raj, and it is quickly stepped back from and then kind of swept under a rug afterward. I think I would have liked this book a lot more if we were also given Yuki's perspective, instead of the story just being a single POV. Grace had some good moments but I wanted more from the other characters too (who all seemed to have interesting stories that we learn very little about).

The plot is minimal, and I will say that with so little also happening with the characters, I was bored a lot. But I can appreciate the writing and I liked the overall story and the questions the author was bringing up through these characters. I just wanted to know them more and I feel like it barely scratched the surface.

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