Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Act Cool by Tobly McSmith

8 reviews

imstephtacular's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Deadnaming, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Religious bigotry, and Dysphoria

Moderate: Homophobia, Grief, Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Cursing, Mental illness, and Outing

Minor: Drug use, Infidelity, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, Torture, Alcohol, Bullying, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, and Sexual content

kayladaila's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Dysphoria, Religious bigotry, Transphobia, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Grief, Abandonment, Infidelity, Outing, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, and Cursing

Minor: Drug use, Drug abuse, and Forced institutionalization

housedominic's review

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad tense fast-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Alcohol, Drug use, Dysphoria, Bullying, Deadnaming, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

almckay's review

challenging emotional 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

Moderate: Drug use

beca_reads's review

hopeful sad medium-paced

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

3.5

I have so many feelings about this book, it's hard to put it into words. We follow August who has recently come out as Transgender to his family. Unfortunately his parents are not understanding, and results in his Aunt taking him under her wing and moving him to New York where he can attend performing Arts school. August has always wanted to perform on stage and this gives him the chance, though his parent's actions still control some of his decisions. August ends up putting on a persona that is not him, this honestly makes him quite a unlikeable character for most of the book but it is clear that deep down this is not the real August. We follow him as he works out the actor he wants to become, and the people he meets along the way that helps him.  The book discuss transphobia within school, and the theatre, as well as discussing conversion therapy which his family want to put him into. This is not a light read at all and has trigger warnings for: transphobia, conversion therapy, homophobia, dead naming, and miss gendering. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Deadnaming, Outing, Child abuse, and Drug use

Moderate: Self harm

spottedcow's review

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing 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

3.75

This book was a very quick fun read :D i loved all the theater references and it was nicley written. There are some parts that were odd, but it was an extremely fun  read. (Dont get scared by the trigger warnings, it dosent go into to much detail and is mostly light harted)

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Content Warnings

Minor: Body shaming, Child abuse, Deadnaming, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Cursing, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Biphobia, Dysphoria, Abandonment, Alcohol, Bullying, and Forced institutionalization

heartbookmark's review

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective 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

4.0

Despite all the LGBTQIA+ books that I have read and own, this is the first one I've read with a transgender protagonist. I live in a small, religious town, so I have to drive out of my way to find and purchase these kinds of books. 

Anyways, I actually really enjoyed this book. I would have given it a full five stars, but there were times where the pacing felt off (I'm not really used to reading books with so many small time-skips in them.) and, in my personal opinion, had some minor side plots that seemed entirely unnecessary. 

There was also the fact that there was a pansexual character that was portrayed as a cheater and that made me uncomfortable as a bisexual person myself whose best friend is pansexual. It was a trope that I've had to deal with personally in real life where people assumed that's what bisexual and pansexual people always do when in a relationship. I'm not saying that there aren't bi and pan people out there who actually do that, but this is how we are portrayed in any type of media the majority of the time.

The entire section about conversion therapy made me very emotional and I cried near the end. I have never personally be threatened to be sent to conversion therapy, but that's because I was lucky enough that my very religious grandparents weren't so cruel that they would send their only grandchild to be tortured and "fixed" just because of who she is. If they had been that cruel, conversion therapy would have been my reality. I get super uncomfortable and emotional when conversion therapy is brought up because of how horrible it is and how lucky I was to avoid something like that when others weren't so lucky in past and possibly present. It's a well-written section of the book that was meant to make people emotional while reading it and it was successful at doing so, for me at least.

That being said, this is a book that does need some recognition because there's not much transgender representation in YA novels as protagonists. Transgender characters are usually side characters or even characters that show up once and then are never seen again.

Also, I want to note that I loved that there was a content warning inside the book. There needs to be more of that. I am so used to seeing tags on fanfiction (which are essentially content warnings) and not seeing them in actual books that I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. 

For anyone who wants to read this book, I recommend that you go ahead and do so. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

Moderate: Alcoholism, Bullying, and Mental illness

Minor: Drug use, Lesbophobia, and Outing

betweentheshelves's review

emotional sad fast-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

 Thanks to Quill Tree Books and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book to review! I am actually completely in love with this cover. The color pallette is amazing and I think it really fits the story. I also read Stay Gold last year and was interested to see what this author did next!

Unfortunately, this book missed the mark for me. I just don’t think McSmith’s writing style is for me. Stay Gold was a book that didn’t really seem to know what it wanted to do, and I felt much the same about this one. August acts so much in this story that it’s difficult to pick out what his actual identity is. He loses himself in his love for acting, and this isn’t quite resolved by the end of the book.

Additionally, the romance in the book felt forced to me. Honestly, I don’t even think this story needed the side romance; there’s so much here with August dealing with his parents that I think this plot line could have been completely removed. Instead, I wanted more from August and his Aunt. This was the best aspect of the book as the two of them gain the courage to breakaway from August’s parents. That’s the redeeming quality of book, in my opinion.

While I understand the acting was a huge part of August’s journey, I wanted to see more resolution in terms of breaking away from transphobic parents. Also, I thought we had finally gotten away from inculding deadnames in books with trans main characters, but I guess not. It’s been done in other books, so let’s keep that trend!

Anyway, there were good aspects to this book, but overall, it wasn’t really for me. I can see some teens relating to it, though! 

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I just don't think McSmith's writing style is for me. This book was very much a mixed bag for me. Full review to come next week!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming, Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

Moderate: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Mental illness

Minor: Alcohol and Drug use

There are also a lot of mentions of conversion therapy