Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Sizzle Reel by Carlyn Greenwald

14 reviews

felishacb's review against another edition

emotional lighthearted reflective fast-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? It's complicated

3.5

Set in Hollywood, this bisexual coming out story has queer friendship and a celebrity crush that becomes a real situationship.

I read this after reading Val's story (Director's Cut), and I think I liked the characters in this one a bit more. It may have been my ability to relate to the bi identity. The late bloomer context will resonate with folks, but I do always find it interesting when an early 20-something considers themselves a late bloomer. As Haley Jakobson and many others remind us, 'There is no behind.' And it's always the right time to come out when you feel it is (if/when you do).

It also ends with one of my fave tropes, so there were bonus points for that.

It was difficult to get through all the passages where the MC calls many sex acts "not sex." She is unlearning cisheteronormativity, and I tried to remember that. There is a great full circle moment where she lets go of these faulty definitions.

Quotes:

"But then it's like the bisexual part of my brain just decides to turn on. Information floods in."

"The teacher for them is a person, is me. And I don't want to be a lesson for them. I just want them to have already had the epiphany because that's what you have to do to be a compassionate person in this world. But those aren't the parents I was blessed with, so they're not being blessed with being among the first five people I come out to. Maybe not even the first 10. Maybe not the first 50."

Content Warnings

ergaich's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.0

All the characters were so one dimensional. The main character was very immature with no arc. It makes sense that she was immature to start with but she didn’t grow until one magical moment when she transformed into an enlightened gay at the very end. Some of the writing felt unnatural, especially during romantic or spicy scenes. Just felt like the author was trying too hard

Content Warnings

code_kobold's review

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medium-paced

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

2.5

I think this was a solid romance book, just not to my taste. There were some instances of homophobia and biphobia I didn't really like. The book had a good chunk of messy drama, which I don't really like that much. I like fluffier romance books personally. I felt the characters were a tad flat to me personally. I feel like we could have learned a bit more about them. There were some characters I didn't like that kept coming up. However the smut scenes were very well written lol that's what bumped it from a 2 to a 2.5. Discussed some specifics I didn't like in the spoilers.

Really didn't like the outing part by Wyatt, quite frankly hate him. Hate that he was still considered a friend after that. Didn't like whenever showed up. And oh he lost his job and it's supposed to be even, like no. Also thought some stuff was really cringey, like the wrap party incident. Also how in denial Luna was when she was trying to figure out if Val was gay, though I think that's an "I'm in this picture and I don't like it" situation. The ending felt a bit rushed and I feel like the romance between Luna and Romy could've been grown more it felt a little out of left field when it all wrapped up.

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krystalanddogs's review

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-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

4.0

I might revisit this rating later after I've stewed but I really liked it. There were times when I felt like too much might be going on, but I did feel pulled along the main character's journey. It's been a minute since I've read something that wasn't dual POV, but I think the amount of stuff going on sticking to one perspective was a good call. I devoured this book.

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jackiepreston's review

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emotional lighthearted 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? No

3.25

The foreshadowing in this book is written on the biggest neon sign you've ever seen.

By making it so obvious that Romy was in love with Luna the whole time and that Luna was just ignoring her own feelings, the entire "romance" with Valeria seemed almost pointless.

The characters themselves read much younger than they were, and there was a very odd emphasis on the 5 year age gap between Luna and Valeria when 24 and 29 is a perfectly normal difference in ages.

Content Warnings

beffynicole's review against another edition

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fast-paced

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

1.75

Representation: Jewish sapphic bisexual main character. sapphic love interest. sapphic nonbinary love interest. nbilw romance & wlw romance.

I'm so sick of getting disappointed by books that genuinely look so good. But this book was just... not it.

Here’s how I think the writing of this book went:

Step 1: Write first version of the book where characters and scenes happen one way.
Step 2: Tear that version to shreds and put it in a bowl.
Step 3: Write a second version of the book where characters and scenes shift a little.
Step 4: Tear that version to shreds and add to the bowl.
Step 5: Repeat one or two more times.
Step 6: Sit on TikTok or Tumblr and learn what discourse/identities are on the up now. Sprinkle those in without a lot of research.
Step 7: Shake that bowl up and pull pieces out, stitching them together with a very unbelievably thin thread.

Thank you NetGalley for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

PROS:

One of the love interests, Valeria, was awesome. She had some problems but overall she was my favorite character. I think a story following her would have been far more intriguing. She was messy without being super harmful and I think that would have been a better story to tell. Maybe expand on why she’s so good.

The cinematography was cool too. I don’t know much about it but the parts where Luna or others were working on projects were some of the most fleshed out and well written sections of the book.

CONS:

The writing in this book and the characterization of the main characters were incredibly juvenile. I often give books a pass for this because normally it’s because they’re YA and I can look at it and say “hey, this book is for young adults and I’m not the target age group anymore.” However, this book is New Adult. I’m literally the target audience, at least according to the marketing and the actual contents of the book (relatively explicit sex scenes) but it wasn’t written for me.

The writing overall was not great. Mediocre at best, terrible at worst. Dialogue was clunky and unbelievable, I felt like I was getting monologued at. Descriptions were choppy and out of place. I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what else but it was just missing something to even take it to bearable 90% of the time.

Everyone sucks (except Val). I couldn’t root or get invested in this story because genuinely all the characters sucked. Luna is self-absorbed, manipulative, and annoying. Romy is also manipulative, petty, and cocky. Luna’s ex-boyfriend Wyatt? Outed her without much of a conversation about the harm. Luna’s brother? Seemingly nice then all of the sudden rude when she came out.

Most of the characters were not well developed and had no sense of growth or dimension. They just existed through the perception of Luna, which I would say is also very unreliable.

I honestly think most of the characters only existed to further the plot instead of enhance it, meaning we would see them for a second then they would drop off and a lot of actions weren’t believable. Most of them didn’t have a ton of purpose in the story except for that one little interaction. For example, I think Wyatt’s purpose was to show that hey look! Luna has dated men so she’s a “real” bisexual (which is harmful in itself) and then later to out her.

Many of the characters also weren’t consistent. Not in a way where they had growth throughout the book, but where they would act one way and then act completely contrary in another scene. For example, Remy is terrible in the beginning and then we are just supposed to love her at the end? Luna’s brother sucks when she comes out to him but then all of the sudden, with no other on-page growth, she loves and trusts him more than ever??

The relationship(s) sucked. Because I disliked almost all of the characters, it’s no surprise that I think the relationships sucked. Luna’s relationship with Valeria was so fast and it was clear Luna was just using her. However, Romy and Luna’s relationship was even worse because all the way up until the last couple chapters of the book, Romy is so unlikable and horrible that their relationship doesn’t make sense. There was no tension or attraction leading up to the actual relationship. Luna just liked that Romy was into her.

I feel like all the Tumblr queer discourse was brought into this book. And here’s the thing, I think this topic can actually be navigated and create amazing stories. It takes grace and delicate touch (see Imogen, Obviously) but unfortunately, this book had none of that.

A lot of words and terms were thrown around, sometimes very incorrectly, which left me feeling like this book was more about phony grandstanding than actually delving into some very important conversations. One of the more blatant issues was the casual aphobia that the book had while also acknowledging that ace people exist (I’m pretty sure in the same chapter). It’s like the author felt the need to pretend to be more understanding and well-versed in queer discourse than they actually were.

There are stories that definitely have these conversations interwoven into the books, but this was thrown at us like a well-intentioned but poorly-informed informational pamphlet, not a coming out/coming of age story.

Luna is not messy, she’s harmful and misguided. For all that Luna is said to be well informed about queer discourse, she is openly harmful repeatedly. I get that, all of us have biases to work on. All of us make mistakes. All of us have things we need to challenge in ourselves. But don’t write a character that is supposedly super well informed and “woke” and then have them fail at some of the most basic understandings… while also being borderline bigoted to friends.

The author of this book has said they like to write messy characters, so it’s assumed that Luna would be a messy character. Honestly, messy characters themselves are not bad. Some authors (see RF Kuang) can write flawed characters and they are a great tool for social commentary. But messy characters are not great when the entire book is messy and their actions are excused or ignored. Again, messy characters and social commentary take a lot of tact to write. This book had none of that.

Penetration = real sex. At least according to Luna for the majority of this book. A major plot point of this book is that she is a bisexual virgin who wants to have sex. Before reading the book you’re given this idea Luna is inexperienced in all things sexual. It’s in the summary. It’s a selling point for this book.

And it’s not true.

Luna has a lot of experience, just not with women. It’s also arguably, one of the worst parts of the book. Luna is so overly focused on having gay sex that she is terrible to people around her, manipulates people, and continues to spout patriarchal standards for sex at every chance. Which again, with her being so informed on community discourse, you would think she would understand such a basic concept that all sex doesn’t have to have penetration, let alone with some sort of phallic appendage.

I believe that everyone can describe their own virginity in their own contexts and with their own guidelines… if they want to define it at all or even want to care about “virginity” in the first place. My issue comes when you start ascribing your own definition on other people or implying (or honestly flat out saying) that only certain types of sexual actions are real sex. And that’s what Luna did. Constantly. Even though she was told multiple times that’s not true.

I can also understand feeling imposter syndrome or like somehow you aren’t included in the definition someone provides. I get it. But it’s another thing to use that doubt and spread it to everyone else. I’m bisexual and married to a man and I am constantly feeling like I am faking my queerness. But I also logically know and can say with certainty, that I don’t believe this of other people. If my friend said “Bethany, I feel like I’m faking being bisexual because I’m married to a man” I would be reassuring them of their identity.The problem is, the author does not do this for Luna. So for Luna, how she feels about things must be how they are.

Like did the author themselves just learn that sex doesn’t have to include penetration? Was this her exploring the concept with her characters, including all the internalized and harmful rhetoric that can come with it? Even so, a lot of this could have been explored in therapy, not in a book published and sent out to a ton of queer people who deal with a ton of doubt and issues with this topic.

The plot and pacing was rushed and predictable. The love triangle was very obvious from chapter one, and because the characters sucked, there was no incentive to root for any relationship. The ending was also incredibly rushed so Remy & Luna had no growth as romantic partners (or individual people).

Luna’s coming out process was also super rushed and didn’t mirror reality at all.

The lingo and identities often felt thrown in instead of genuine. It was like the author wanted to show how woke or hip she was, especially because sometimes these things were heavily repeated with no purpose to the plot. Don’t get me wrong, I love representation and queer culture jokes (like disaster bisexual, gay crisis, etc.) but including these with such a heavy hand and already showing you haven’t done research into some of these identities, really just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Content Warnings

jmusil44's review

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medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.0

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lexnicole's review

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emotional funny lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

3.0

Content Warnings

shaipanda's review

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

2.75

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

While this was overall a solid read for me and I really really appreciated the Jewish representation (especially within a queer contemporary book), I ended up being fairly disappointed by this overall. I'm not sure exactly why but I had a hard time getting through this and overall did not feel that connected to the story. While it wasn't done badly, I didn't love the love triangle aspect of it and did not find the characters to be that compelling or likeable. Additionally, while I didn't like the love triangle aspect I think I would have disliked it even more if I hadn't caught on to Valeria not being the only love interest. If I hadn't realized I bet (and based on others reviews it seems that this is true) that it would have found it to be very abrupt and odd shift especially because we spend so much of this book with Valeria.

I also found the spice to be very out of place? I'm not sure why exactly but this is not a book that I expected to have explicit scenes for some reason and as a result I tended to skip past them. I also thought this was especially true given Luna's weird ongoing obsession with sex and what virginity means throughout the book. While I feel that this is an important discussion to have and it can be very complicated and confusing, it felt like it came up too many times and became too repetitive and also infiltrated the sex scenes at times , making it kinda uncomfortable at times to read.

Content Warnings

arireadsitall's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted 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

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I haven’t seen much about this book online minus a few friends that loved it but I did really enjoy it. The protagonist is someone that you root for but also you will shake your head at a little bit. She’s coming into her own as bi sexual and thinks a big actress can be the one. Cue the mess! But wow did I root for Luna and her coming into her own

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