Reviews with content warning for Grief - Summer Bird Blue

I was really looking forward to reading a book with ace/aro representation, but i found Rumi to be a bit unlikeable and hard to connect with. Her reactions and behaviors made it hard to want to continue reading the book. I feel there are better ways to have written a character stricken with grief. The romance/friendship between the two characters felt a bit contrived as well.
The book had a lot of potential, but I don’t think was written well or that the characters were well developed. Overall, it felt a bit shallow.

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silversparkles50's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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

3.0

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ashreadsandbowls's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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noraaa_9999's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

I liked the book, but it was a slow read for me as it deals with some heavy feelings. When you want to read it check the content warnings and be aware that it deals with grief a lot. I enjoyed the development of the friendships of the main character, and I think her dealing with questioning her sexuality was well done. The one thing I found could have been done a bit better was the pacing. The first part of the novel was very slow, and felt a bit repetetive sometimes, the last chapters felt a bit rushed in comparison. But apart from that it was very good to read, the writing and short chapters.

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evelynyle_88's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

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innastholiel's review

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emotional sad slow-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 don’t really like this book. There is honestly a fair number of reasons for that, but my main gripe with it is really only one thing: This book doesn’t have a focus point. The two major themes are grief and sexual/romantic identity, but they don’t fit together, so the book ends up just sort of puttering around for 350-odd pages, and at the end of it, you’re sort of left hanging, because neither theme is really given the room to be explored.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this is probably not an own-voices novel for asexuality or aromanticism, at least not in the more narrow definition of those identities (i.e. someone doesn’t experience sexual or romantic attraction at all). I have no problem with authors writing characters of different identities to them, but they really should do their research, and I kinda feel like Akemi Dawn Bowman didn’t.

I believe that part of the problem is the aforementioned lack of focus: This book is also about grief, and that really muddies the waters. Rumi is stuck in a deep dark hole of it, and that sort of environment doesn’t lend itself to exploring sexual and romantic identity. Rumi considering labels like “asexual” and “aromantic” is mentioned in the flashbacks, but the bulk of the book takes place in the present, after Rumi has suffered a terrible loss that eclipses all other things. Grief is an ugly and complicated beast, and it eats up nearly all of a person’s mental capacity and energy. Which, again, is why it’s a terrible idea to incorporate exploration of self-identification in a novel that also focuses heavily on grief. The end result is a book that feels like it’s not really interested in exploring what it means to be asexual and/or aromantic, and only included those identities for brownie points, or because the author or their agent or whoever thought that those identities are easy to come to terms with and therefore don’t need space to exist. Asexuality and aromanticism are defined by a lack of something, rather than its presence, but an absence can still take up space, and it deserves that space to exist and to be examined.

The other problem — and this isn’t excused by the book’s lack of a focus point — is that Rumi is a bit of a stereotype: She’s kinda cold, and kinda mean, and weirdly attached to her sister in a way that made me a little uncomfortable, personally. Of course there are ace and/or aro people who are cold and mean, just like there are cold and mean people of any other sexual/romantic identity, but ace and/or aro representation is really deficient, and if the only representation that exists consists of stereotypes, that creates a significant problem. Media has a responsibility to create understanding in the public eye; it should normalise different ways to be a person, and show that all those ways are valid. That is why it is crucial that the creators of media explore their preconceived notions before they put their stories out into the world, so that mean-spirited, stereotypical portrayals can be avoided, however intentional or unintentional they may be.

The death blow is that the novel also fails to explore grief in any sort of deep or meaningful way. Rumi is stuck for most of the book: She’s angry, and she lashes out, until she doesn’t. This is not a process we see her go through; she’s bad, and then she’s better, just like that. There isn’t even an examination of Rumi’s (arguably) distorted memories: Lea is perfect in every one of them. It would have been much more interesting to see Rumi remember that her sister wasn’t perfect, because her sister was a human being. I think realising that would’ve cemented Rumi’s path to healing, instead of making it seem like healing just happens. The message appears to be “time heals all wounds”, which I’ve never found to be true, and also isn’t very interesting from a story-telling perspective because it places no onus on the character’s part and therefore the character never has to achieve anything.

The truth is this: Healing takes effort; it takes exploration and self-reflection. I don’t see Rumi making any significant efforts, I don’t see her explore her feelings or self-reflect, yet she still somehow knows that her behaviour is wrong and not constructive, which honestly makes the fact that she behaves like she does at all much more sinister and childish. And the other characters don’t even confront her about it, they give her way too much slack, especially Kai. He did not know Rumi before she lost Lea and therefore has no way of contextualising her behaviour. So for all intents and purposes, he should not be interested in her in any way because from his perspective, she’s a gloomy girl he just met who’s nothing but mean to him. Honestly, to me this book kinda screams girl meets boy who solves all her problems with lurv, despite not featuring a romantic relationship.

I understand that in real life, many things happen at the same time. But the point of a story isn’t to throw 50 different things at a wall to see what sticks, it is to focus in on — honestly imo ideally only one thing, and to explore that. Anything else you add to the story should come from that and link back to it. Because this book tries to incorporate two major themes and doesn’t connect them, they end up fighting each other to be on top, and the end result is a book that has nothing to add to any conversation, except maybe a mumbled “I dunno” accompanied by a shrug.

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