Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Honey Girl

I cannot for the life of me give Honey Girl a 4 star rating. I want to because I related to some of the mental healing. But when it comes to the self-care at many points it felt like avoidance when there were other characters , humans who cared about Grace Porter willingly and able to listen. Thing is not everyone has or will get that. Which is the flaw of the major progress she has for me .

I was patient reading while Grace recovers from being a perfectionist who has a plan laid out for her. One she has been focused on through her late teens and entire twenties. Not to mention recovery from the expectations by her military black dad. And a nomadic mom , whose white, that left her all alone with these pressures.

But she has some tendencies that are straining her relationships. Most often when she gets afraid or overwhelmed and runs from Portland to New York City and then Sansbury, Flordia. It happen every tim she felt the urge to be stubborn and wanted to push her family away. Even those she met over the years.

I'm all for space but she completely didn't let anyone who understood know what was going on with her . Which is okay for someone who has the pressure of a career goal. But a the same its like not like everyone has it together. Like has a full on PhD and those ready to be supportive about the issues in one academic program. But maybe if this was me after eleven years of my life I'd understand it better.

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zroey's review against another edition

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inspiring 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? It's complicated

4.0

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alouette's review

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challenging emotional hopeful 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

4.5

"I love you so much it hurts."

the pretty, flowery prose occasionally confused me- but it was fitting for a book packed with so many emotions. you can see grace's perspectives change through the book and the biases of her point of view be unbuilt by her experiences. the pacing was a bit frustrating because i wanted to see much more of her time in New York, but i can never fault a book when it focuses on leaving someone to love them better and taking care of/talking about one's mental health. on that note...

it still frustrates me a little that yuki says "but you better not leave me again" when i know that space can be super healthy and i thought that's what was to be learned from this book. so to have it end on that note is a little disappointing. especially when grace's own mother lost the happiness in her first love but has found it again in her second. it shows that as people change they may not always fit with each other in the same ways. which is why i much prefer "i'll stay as long you'll have me" over the "promise" that they'll always be together forever.

i really warmed up to all the characters, who are very strong and realistic, and was super proud of grace. when a character i relate to realizes their happiness and health is important? hell yeah! and even if the romance was quite cheesy, that didn't lessen its impact.

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lgmorgan000's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective 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

5.0

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clemrain's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

This review is a therapeutic rant. Not worth the read. But was worth the write after struggling through the pages of Honey Girl.

The cover art is gorgeous and that alone can give the book one star, but the rating goes down a star because this gorgeous cover lead me to a terrible novel.

I really wasn’t expecting to give this a 0 star rating. I have a point system that I calculate my star ratings on, and then change the number based on gut feeling. Not super mathematical, but my points added to 0 and so did my gut.

I want to say I’m disappointed because this novel wasn’t what I wanted it to be. But I didn’t have any expectations going in. So, it truly just wasn’t a book for me.

There are too many characters. None of them are fleshed out. I don’t think the author thought about the characters past what type of POC, LGBTQ+ or mental illness rep they were going to be. Most characters feel redundant, and between all of them there is no plot. A character based novel is good too, but this book wasn’t that either. It ran on a singular theme (loneliness) and read like a first draft.

The main character, Grace Porter, is truly so annoying. The entire time she complains about being a WOC and that’s the only reason she’s supposedly not succeeding. While simultaneously, having a picture perfect beginning to a romance, parents that support her financially, and friends that love her so much. She’s also explicitly stated as attractive. She’s on the cover and she’s gorgeous. A good solid foundation in succeeding. It almost comes across like internalized racism that she can only name her being half black as the reason to why she didn’t get a job offer.

Maybe the point flew over my head.

As a WOC myself, I understand very well how looking a certain way can cost opportunities. But majority of those losses come in bigger systematic issues which Grace doesn’t face in this novel—let’s say, in a greater extent. There are micro aggressions detailed in the novel and they did a good job illustrating what it is like being a WOC in STEM. However, it’s hard to relate to a supposed systemically oppressed main character that can easily afford trips to New York and Orange groves when they want to runaway from their very small problems like not succeeding in the very first job interview they went to.

She gets called out on her BS by her brother but the brother retracts the statement, says sorry a million times and Grace doesn’t learn anything from it. Where’s the character development?

Grace says she doesn’t even care for astronomy and it was a decision made to have individualism from her overbearing father but in the end she resolves to stay in the field. How does that make sense? I felt that her taking over the tea shop and jumping into a passion for herself while having her waitress wife run it with her would have been a great resolution to not only the big question of career, but also her brother’s only presented hardship plus the romance. The ending we got instead was “guess I’ll teach, so I can be with this hot stranger and leave behind my friends and family who have supported me my entire life for a woman who’s only ever gotten aggressive with me when I asked her why she hunts monster for fun.” Like girl where are your priorities?

I’d talk about the other characters, but honestly they’re all annoying too and I can’t actually distinct them from one another.

The writing style is so millennial. There’s no other way to describe it. Even that though, isn’t a death sentence to its writing. What really kills it for me is the the utter loss of literary technique. There’s repetition, but it isn’t used effectively enough to evoke emotion. There are metaphors, but truly too many and they lose their significance and don’t cause a pang. Etc. every literary devices I picked up on just wasn’t effectively used. The dialogue is unnatural. Does this author have siblings? Because siblings do not converse like that. In short, the writing style wasn’t for me.

The pacing was slow. Unbearably slow. The plot jumped in directions that made no sense. One scene didn’t naturally bridge to the next. Truly, I thought I was missing pages at points. The entire time I was reading this I wanted the book to be over. I don’t DNF books, which is the only reason I finished it. But I was close to making this my first DNF.

The themes of loneliness are some of my favourites to read. However, this book was so corny. The radio show starting by asking if someone is out there. A bit on the nose. Comparing loneliness to shunned creatures is a beautiful concept. But it’s terribly executed in the book and hardly a new concept. Frankenstein is bicentennial.

I’ve seen this book described as a coming of age. I think the reason I’m so harsh with this book is because it’s about a 29 year old. Girl you’re not having a coming of age. You have a whole ass PhD.

Loneliness in your 20s is a concept not much written about. Or at least not much I’ve read on in nonfiction. I wish the author had focused on the age group she was writing and wrote her story true to that. This read like YA about 12 year olds.

Ending had literally nothing to do with the novel and didn’t conclude the story at all.

I really want to add a positive in here. I really really do. But the pretty cover compliment is all I have.

I hope the author writes their next novel with good research, a plot chart, and many revisions. Maybe even get a new editor.

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sinaprst's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

2.0

I feel like this book tried to do to many things within these barely 300 pages.

There were just so many characters that I could just not really connect to any of them as I could barely remember their names. Then you had the lovestory between Grace and Yuki, the storyline of Grace figuring out what to do with her life, the storyline between her and her father, her racist and sexist experiences in her work life, the sidestory with the ghost hunting, the sidestory about the tea shop, the sidestory about Grace's mother and her new boyfriend, the sidestory of one of her friends struggling with her mental health and so on. I feel like the author just couldn't decide what to focus on, so she decided to just touch on every issue in sight.

I guess I'm just really disappointed, because this could've been so good if the story just was more focused.
I really wanted to like this and I do hope the author continues writing because I did really like her writing style. This was her debut novel so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt in a way and maybe her next novel will be immaculate, because I feel like the potential is there.

Also, I do really appreciate the representation in this book. As far as I can tell it was done pretty well here. There is still so much representation lacking in the industry and I would love to see more like this in the future in that regard.

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shelvesofivy's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring slow-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

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