Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus

18 reviews

happyblkhippie's review

emotional inspiring reflective relaxing sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Abandonment

Moderate: Racism, Car accident, Grief, Religious bigotry, Terminal illness, Emotional abuse, and Sexual content

dandeliongirl's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia and Lesbophobia

Moderate: Cancer, Terminal illness, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Grief, Sexual content, Slavery, Emotional abuse, Racism, Abandonment, Child death, and Police brutality

zombiezami's review

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

This is what The Fault in Our Stars wishes it was

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Child abuse, Mental illness, Outing, Chronic illness, Confinement, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Cancer, Death, Religious bigotry, Domestic abuse, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Drug use, Kidnapping, Racism, Sexual harassment, Grief, Classism, Alcohol, and Gaslighting

Minor: Gun violence, Suicide, Colonisation, Addiction, Drug abuse, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Police brutality, and Slavery

lunar_lapis's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad fast-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

Still remains the most beautiful, emotional, heartbreaking and empowering book I've ever read 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Racism, Homophobia, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, Chronic illness, Grief, Medical content, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Child abuse, Hate crime, Slavery, Cursing, Death, Gun violence, Police brutality, and Sexual content

Minor: Drug use, Vomit, and Drug abuse

skudiklier's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad 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

5.0

Gosh I loved this. I didn't really know much going in, so one of the main plot points really took me by surprise. This book is so beautiful and it made me cry a lot. I'd definitely recommend it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Death, Homophobia, Child death, and Lesbophobia

Moderate: Violence, Physical abuse, Drug use, Confinement, Grief, Sexual content, Child abuse, Racism, and Transphobia

Minor: Slavery, Medical content, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Outing, Murder, and Mental illness

maxgdy's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful sad 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child abuse, Grief, Homophobia, Outing, Religious bigotry, Terminal illness, and Violence

Minor: Medical content, Sexual content, Slavery, and Transphobia

So beautiful and sweet with a fitting ending for such an spiritual book like this one.

bookswhitme's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

This book was beautifully written. The prose sucked me in and the story itself was tragic, but again beautiful. Audre and Mabel’s relationship had me ready to cry, but I loved being able to watch them connect and grow. 

The one thing I wished I’d known or liked to before reading was that cancer plays a big role in the book because it was a bit triggering for me, so that wasn’t fun. That’s a me thing though. But if leukemia/cancer is a painful point for you, it’s in this book heavy. Also homophobia, masturbation, prison/death row, death/dying.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Terminal illness, Cancer, Death, and Grief

lily1304's review against another edition

hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.25

Audre and Mabel have a sweet little romance. I haven't read any YA in a while, and I missed it. I appreciate how Petrus describes both Minneapolis and Port of Spain with such familiarity and love. She can paint such loving scenes of family and friends supporting one another.

It's impossible for me not to compare this book to The Fault in Our Stars. Though they have a really similar basic premise, they each deal with love and death and grief in totally different ways. I relate much more strongly to the pessimism and spiritual doubt of TFIOS than the optimism of The Stars and the Blackness Between Them. Because I'm John Green trash, I know that he wrote TFIOS based on his experience serving as a hospital chaplain for teens with cancer - an experience which made him decide not to become a priest - and that really shows in Hazel's anger and despair and "what if God - I mean, the author, I mean, Peter Van Houten - is real and wants nothing to do with us?" Petrus being a Black woman already gives her a different perspective than John Green, and I wonder what life experiences inspired her.

I didn't expect New Age spirituality to be so intrinsic to the book - to the point that it's somewhere on the border between realistic and speculative fiction. It made me more mindful of my biases and attitudes about things like astrology and past lives - I have to constantly remind myself that my own religion would sound just as weird if it weren't the dominant religion in the United States. There were some anti-medicine/"food is medicine" vibes too, though, which concerns me a little.

Despite all that... I liked the ending.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Grief, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, and Sexual content

melaniereadsbooks's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-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

4.75

This book was so beautiful and meaningful and absolutely heart breaking.  I loved reading it, but it made me cry a lot. 

There were a lot of tough themes to deal with in this book, but the overall message and the beauty of the writing were amazing and definitely worth the heartbreak. I would recommend this book to everyone. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Homophobia, Child abuse, Terminal illness, Religious bigotry, Grief, and Racism

Moderate: Sexual content

bookishandlegal's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

3.75

I really enjoyed this book and thought the story was great. The chapters being told between the perspectives of the two main characters worked really well and made it easy to get to know them on a deeper level and really see into their point of views. This story was beautifully written and both uplifting, heartwarming, and devastating. There were a couple of things that didn’t really work for me. The insights into Queenie’s life that we got in the second half of the book were super interesting and I wanted more of them, but that never connected to the rest of the story and I was confused about why it was added and how it fit in. I also found some of the jumps in time between the chapters to be abrupt and wanted to see more of how Mabel and Audre’s relationship built and what was happening between the chapters instead of just being told it was happening. I also found the ending a little abrupt and am a bit confused about what actually happened at the end (I think I generally get the theme of the ending but it was a little too vague and thematic and not as too the point as I generally like—but that’s just the writing style of the book and more of a me problem than a book problem). Overall this was a really lovely story that I really enjoyed. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Death, Grief, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Homophobia

Minor: Slavery