Reviews tagging 'Infidelity'

True Biz by Sara Nović

7 reviews

claudine2's review

challenging dark emotional informative 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? No

4.5

A very interesting book. A neat mixture of fiction and non-fiction. I love how it touched on so many different Deaf and Deaf-adjacent experiences. Very informative, while also being entertaining.

There were a few parts that I struggled with, but in the end, it did make sense why things happened the way they did. I didn't see where it was going until there were only about 40 pages left.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Ableism, Drug use, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Child abuse, Car accident, and Dementia

Minor: Infidelity, Medical content, Physical abuse, Sexual content, and Alcohol

lovealwaysadi's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring 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? No

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Dementia, Ableism, Alcohol, Car accident, Chronic illness, Classism, Death of parent, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Blood, Cursing, Grief, and Racism

Minor: Infidelity and Sexual content

wy_woman's review against another edition

adventurous emotional informative reflective 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? It's complicated

4.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Car accident and Physical abuse

Moderate: Ableism, Death, Medical content, Medical trauma, Violence, Drug use, Alcohol, Gaslighting, and Death of parent

Minor: Bullying, Grief, Racism, Classism, Sexual content, Cursing, and Infidelity

oliverreeds's review

emotional funny hopeful 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

4.5

fuckin excellent. just some of the kids behavior is a little like huh?

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Ableism, Alcohol, Racism, Religious bigotry, Body shaming, Death of parent, Drug use, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Medical trauma, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Sexual content, Violence, Bullying, Car accident, and Pregnancy

martinatan's review

emotional informative inspiring tense 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

5.0

What a killer, heartfelt story! I loved the use of the chapter bumpers as diegetic one-pagers on Deaf culture, ASL, and Wikipedia articles. The ending and how it resolved formative conflicts in the three protagonists’  lives was so satisfying to experience. I loved that it served as a testament to direct action, while showing that the tradeoffs in taking such action are hard to ignore when multiple parties’ livelihoods are at stake.

This novel truly feels like a love letter to the Deaf community and disabled activists. The author does a wonderful job of incorporating different archetypes of Deaf experience that dispel any thoughts of monolith from Deaf ideologies. After reading this, I am more curious about other intersectional identities that were not covered related to race, gender, religion, and other disability.

The formatting of dialogue and illustrative chapter titles speak to the spirit of the term “deaf gain” as opposed to “hearing loss”—these visual and spatial tidbits enhance Nović’s strong artistic voice. Highly recommend to anyone seeking an earnest and important coming-of-age story.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content, Ableism, Body shaming, Death, Death of parent, Infidelity, Racism, Car accident, Drug use, Dementia, and Alcohol

Minor: Grief, Hate crime, Confinement, Sexual content, Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Vomit, Classism, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Child abuse, Medical trauma, Toxic relationship, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, and Abandonment

sarah984's review against another edition

informative mysterious 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

3.0

This was a frustrating reading experience for me overall. I loved Charlie's story of acquiring language and access to Deaf culture, and realizing that adults you trust can fail you just as much as those you don't, but the resolution to her plotline is so heavy handed and the "if you don't support teens they will Have Sex And Do Drugs" bit is cartoonish. The main conflict with the teacher is boring because it's entirely her fault, and all of the love triangles are stupid. I liked the sign language examples, but some of the full text wikipedia article stuff felt pointless

(including step by step instructions for building a bomb if you're into that)

and could have been included in other ways. There is one major character of colour and she exists solely to experience anti-Black microaggressions and explain the concept of BASL to Charlie.

The story itself was whatever to me but the way the dialogue is written - between verbal, sign and text dialogue - was really well done.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death of parent, and Medical content

Moderate: Car accident, Child abuse, Dementia, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Bullying, Child death, Pregnancy, Racism, Vomit, Infidelity, Police brutality, and Self harm

A major plotline involves teen characters

building pressure cooker bombs

saucywench813's review

hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This book was an amazing insight into the Deaf community and brought up various topics such as bodily autonomy. I do have my qualms, however. The ending felt strange (with I'm not faulting the book for, I'm just not used to open-ended stories), and I didn't like Slash and his goons as characters and didn't see how they were relevant. I also felt that the issue with February's marriage was never resolved and didn't like how the book tried to make the Charlie-Austin-Slash relationship polyamorous when Charlie never once talked about it with either guy beforehand. I fully fault the book and not the character for that as she wasn't really dating Slash, but I do have a problem with it as it feels like the book is trying to justify cheating by saying "it's just polyamory" when it's not. Not to mention that I don't like how the book handles Wanda because it seems like it was trying to say that Mel was being unreasonable in her jealousy just because Wanda was married to a man. Bi erasure alert, marrying a guy doesn't make Wanda straight and it wasn't unreasonable for Mel to ahve an issue with their relationship.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Ableism, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Drug use, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Physical abuse, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Infidelity, and Sexual content

Minor: Biphobia, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Racism

includes a "faith healing" where

a kid's mom has pastors try to "heal" his Deafness by pouring oils in his ear that leave a scar on his face