Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Call Me Nathan

Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Call Me Nathan by Catherine Castro

31 reviews

brittanybarnard's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

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

3.75

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tj_thekind's review

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emotional hopeful informative 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? No

4.25

This book is good. It hit very specific things I related to and made me ache. But it left me wanting more. Feeling incomplete. Not that the story itself lacked but that I need different endings to these kinds of stories. I'm glad it exists and the art was beautiful

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limina's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

5.0

This was a beautiful book. At times it was heartbreaking, but also very hopeful. At times it is unflinching in it's storytelling. I would recommend this to just about anyone.

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livlamentloathe's review

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emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

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

3.5

The narrative was a bit hard to follow. Sometimes the POV was Nathan, other times it was his brother, mother, or friends. Beyond that, it was a hard but lovely story of a boy finding himself.

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goldenjunegem's review

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emotional reflective fast-paced

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

4.75

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sherlockstan98's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.0

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krys_kilz's review

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challenging emotional fast-paced

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

1.0

If I had realized that this book was not actually written/told by a trans person, I never would have picked it up.

You could tell it was an outsider perspective with the way it tried to cram Nathan's story in with his parents, brother, and friend's experiences of his transition. The entire story veered into trauma porn. There were so many triggering topics and the story just jumped from one traumatic incident to the next with no time to reflect. Nathan felt like a weird prop instead of a person, like the reader was just meant to consume his pain and never actually get to know him. As another reviewer put it, it was voyeuristic and violent.

Then we have the writing itself, which was sporadic, messy, and all over the place. The narrative jumped around so much I had a very hard time following. And a lot of the writing made no sense. I don't know if this was due to the translation or if it was really just that poorly written. And like what was the ending?!?! Or that Islamophobic side comment his mom made about at least Nathan didn't join the jihad?!?

And finally, the artwork. I thought the art style and coloring were beautiful, but a lot of the drawings felt exploitative. Like they were going for shock value instead of genuine emotional connection.

Overall, this book left a bad taste in my mouth and quite frankly, I wish I never read it.

To fellow trans folks, I would strongly encourage you to avoid this book. And to cis folks, please ask yourself why you enjoyed a cis person's narrative of transphobic violence instead of reading stories actually told by us.

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