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keeshdiesel91's review against another edition
3.0
Each character's storyline sounded promising but I feel like the writing was not strong enough to make their story truly come alive the way I expected it to.
sprangalang's review against another edition
4.0
This was good. Loved seeing the progression of each character. From quite depressed to a little better. And all through the power of friendship
spiffysarahruby's review against another edition
4.0
This was a great audiobook! It was a little confusing to listen to at first but three teens are connected by music and by the deaths of friends. It is a bit of a bummer (like most of the books on the Sequoyah Award Masterlist this year--ugh!), but it's got it's funny moments and the relationships here are gold, as are the transitions the kids make while dealing with their individual struggles. This was a lovely book
strawberrytheauthor's review
dark
emotional
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
3.5
This book is all about grief and struggling to find oneself after the death of a loved one. This is a book that I had to be in the right headspace to read and sometimes it was really hard.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Addiction, Alcoholism, Suicide, Cancer, Child death, Cursing, Drug abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Car accident, Death, Drug use, and Grief
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Sexual content, and Blood
halschrieve's review against another edition
5.0
This new YA novel from a debut author is part of a recent trend in literature for teenagers of addressing grief and mourning in new ways. The narrative follows three teenagers who have each just lost someone in their lives—to cancer, a car crash, and suicide, respectively. The narrators come from diverse backgrounds that reflect the diversity of the population of NYC, and each have distinct personalities, though there are admittedly marked similarities: all of them are pretty into music, relatively social and normally extroverted, and all of them react to death with a devastation that gradually upends the way they lived before tragedy and prompts them to need to discover and talk about new aspects of themselves.
I liked Logan’s story arc for being a depiction both of gay love and gay mourning that got into dark places without using tropes of homophobic abuse or shame. Neither Logan or the other three gay/bi characters in the narrative express deep rooted shame about their sexuality, and Logan’s ex boyfriend commits suicide for reasons that don’t have much to do with external abuse or anti-gay sentiment; instead, what we know of his death is as complex and opaque as with any teen suicide. It has something to do with fear of the future and maybe with his own fear of himself, but as much to do with poverty and anxiety and loneliness and maybe addiction. In short, it’s more real than the issue novels of the 90s. Logan reacts to his grief realistically and messily in a way I really love.
Autumn and Shay are also cool, refreshing characters , respectively dealing with different mental health crises and rendered three dimensionally. Autumn holds back with emotions until she explodes; Shay tries to keep from cracking until she finally collapses. Their arcs take longer to find a clear track than Logan’s, but I think that this does reflect the way it is to come back to yourself as a teenager after the death of someone close to you. It takes a long time. It’s hard. It’s not always clear where things will end.
I can’t wait to see more from this author!
I liked Logan’s story arc for being a depiction both of gay love and gay mourning that got into dark places without using tropes of homophobic abuse or shame. Neither Logan or the other three gay/bi characters in the narrative express deep rooted shame about their sexuality, and Logan’s ex boyfriend commits suicide for reasons that don’t have much to do with external abuse or anti-gay sentiment; instead, what we know of his death is as complex and opaque as with any teen suicide. It has something to do with fear of the future and maybe with his own fear of himself, but as much to do with poverty and anxiety and loneliness and maybe addiction. In short, it’s more real than the issue novels of the 90s. Logan reacts to his grief realistically and messily in a way I really love.
Autumn and Shay are also cool, refreshing characters , respectively dealing with different mental health crises and rendered three dimensionally. Autumn holds back with emotions until she explodes; Shay tries to keep from cracking until she finally collapses. Their arcs take longer to find a clear track than Logan’s, but I think that this does reflect the way it is to come back to yourself as a teenager after the death of someone close to you. It takes a long time. It’s hard. It’s not always clear where things will end.
I can’t wait to see more from this author!
xdarkthunderx's review against another edition
3.0
Wasn’t too bad. I definitely think the author has potential and I’m interested in future books by her for sure.
I just didn’t think the three stories about grief were especially strong when we jumped between them. I wish she would have focused on one and made that one great, because two of the stories really shined above the other. I really liked Logan’s story a lot, and thought it had a lot of potential on its own. Shay’s one was pretty decent too, but Autumn’s was boring to me, and I didn’t like the style it used. She could have combined Autumn’s and Shay’s stories, since they also had a pretty significant connecting character in the form of Dante. also thought that while the concept of a band connecting everyone was neat, it was a bigger element than it should have been. Maybe that’s just me, I don’t know.
Definitely not bad, but a bit weaker than I was expecting.
I just didn’t think the three stories about grief were especially strong when we jumped between them. I wish she would have focused on one and made that one great, because two of the stories really shined above the other. I really liked Logan’s story a lot, and thought it had a lot of potential on its own. Shay’s one was pretty decent too, but Autumn’s was boring to me, and I didn’t like the style it used. She could have combined Autumn’s and Shay’s stories, since they also had a pretty significant connecting character in the form of Dante. also thought that while the concept of a band connecting everyone was neat, it was a bigger element than it should have been. Maybe that’s just me, I don’t know.
Definitely not bad, but a bit weaker than I was expecting.