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madreadings's review
5.0
Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Chronic illness, Cancer, and Medical content
Moderate: Vomit
crieraylas's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Medical content, Cancer, Grief, Death, Chronic illness, Racism, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Medical trauma, Addiction, Car accident, and Alcoholism
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Cursing, Vomit, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Drug abuse, Mental illness, Body shaming, and Eating disorder
Minor: Infidelity, Violence, and Abortion
_annika__'s review against another edition
3.75
The issue I have with this book is personal, but perhaps relatable to anyone from a small town - I almost had to put the book down because I couldn’t stand the author continuously calling Eugene, Oregon (second biggest city in the state, a major PAC12 college town, an hour away from Portland) small, boring, and dull. Almost every single person I’ve met that’s lived in a <10,000 person town (and bigger, honestly) would KILL to be in Eugene. If the author would have said “I hated growing up in Eugene” I could’ve moved on, but she seemed to hate it specifically because it’s “small” and because there was “nothing to do.”
Every kid that’s suffered growing up in a 3,000 person town in the middle of a corn field somewhere in the Midwest - where 99.99% of the population is white and so strictly religious they unironically call Halloween “the devil’s holiday” and avoid you like the plague if you don’t go to their same church (imagine if you don’t go to church at all, and they repeatedly egg your house for it) - would have likely cut off a finger or two to grow up in Eugene or anywhere near it. I’m hoping the author bemoaned her adolescence in such a “small town” for dramatic effect and that she didn’t actually feel that strongly about it.
I understand teenage angst and depression and would have been more understanding if that was the main reason for feeling the way she did growing up, since most teens experience those feelings and at least at the time, likely no matter where you live, we feel like we don’t belong and we hate it there. But the amount of those feelings that she blamed specifically on the “small dull Pacific Northwest town” she lived in personally made my eye twitch. Growing up in a larger, modern, and progressive college town (often rated one of the most progressive cities in the entire U.S.) would be a privilege to sooo many.
Since the reader knows she’s writing this post-adolescence I was waiting for her to correct how she felt about this small town with “nothing to do” (aside from going to record stores, go vintage clothes shopping, get specialty Korean ingredients from a local market, and see Modest Mouse - just to name a few). Again, I acknowledge this as a personal issue taken with the book, but I assume most people that grew up in rural or small towns would struggle and also feel that a large part of the author’s adolescence and story is unreachable and I relatable because of this as well.
Graphic: Cancer, Death of parent, Grief, Medical content, Terminal illness, Car accident, Death, and Chronic illness
Moderate: Drug use, Emotional abuse, Bullying, Alcohol, Body shaming, Panic attacks/disorders, Infidelity, Abortion, Addiction, and Alcoholism
ka_cam's review
4.5
Graphic: Chronic illness, Grief, Death, Death of parent, and Cancer
Moderate: Misogyny, Car accident, Racism, and Abortion
anabmuqtar's review
4.0
Moderate: Cancer, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Terminal illness, and Grief
cassondradubois's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Cancer, Chronic illness, and Death of parent
Moderate: Eating disorder
kaylaswhitmore's review
5.0
Graphic: Cancer, Fatphobia, Grief, Terminal illness, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Drug use, Medical trauma, Medical content, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Cursing, Car accident, Infidelity, and Body shaming
Minor: Vomit
bunbun411's review
4.0
Graphic: Car accident, Death, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Alcoholism, Cancer, Chronic illness, and Grief
biab00's review
4.5
Sometimes my grief feels as thought I've been left alone in a room with no doors. Every time I remember that my mother is dead, it feels like I'm colliding with a wall that won't give. There's no escape, just a hard surface that I keep ramming into over and over, a reminder of the immutable reality that I will never see her again.
Graphic: Alcohol, Chronic illness, Medical content, Death of parent, Grief, Death, Terminal illness, and Panic attacks/disorders
eejanke's review
2.5
Graphic: Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Terminal illness, Cancer, and Chronic illness