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4.02 AVERAGE
4.02 AVERAGE
http://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014-book-298.html
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I expected this to be a lot darker. It explores a lot of dark topics, but somehow the audiobook felt like a Mindy Kaling book. Gabi takes explains with a strange sense of humor with everything, leaving me a little detached from the characters. It almost has a Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret feel to it which is really strange for a teenager who is supposed to be 18. I would recommend this book for young teens who may be dealing with similar things as Gabi, but I’m not sure how relatable it is for older readers.
my favorite book of all time! i love how human this book is. it doesn't shy away from showing people as they are, no sugarcoating.
I genuinely enjoyed this. Books rarely make me laugh out loud, but the journal of Gabi is so quintessentially teenage and realistic that it's hard not to laugh at her jokes. Having gone through several trash journals at this age I can vouch that this is precisely the kind of language and style a teenager would use. I liked that this time period was no more specific than 2000s, it makes it as relatable to a senior in high school today as it does to someone who graduated in 2008. And if you take out the mention of cell phones, the range of relatability only increases. A wonderful novel I would like to add to my collection some day.
I wasn't interested in reading this book at first because I didn't like the cover (yes, I judge books by their covers!!), but I saw enough good reviews that I finally picked it up. And it was a big lesson in not judging books by their covers, because I loved it. The story wasn't remarkable, but there were two things I loved about the book:
1. It's super-feminist, and points out a lot of the double-standards that make it hard to be a gal.
2. Gabi is super-likable and has a great voice. She's funny and intelligent and self-aware, which made me care about the run-of-the-mill circumstances of her life.
And I guess it's not accurate to say that the circumstances of her life are run-of-the-mill; It's just all stuff that's pretty common in middle grade and YA fiction. Clearly, not all (or even a majority) of teens have meth-addicted fathers who die of overdoses -- but dead parents seem to crop up a lot in teen novels. This book also deals with rape and teen pregnancy, so there's a lot of heavy shit going on. If I had any other complaint, it would be that Gabi deals with all this trauma way too easily. She seems relatively well-functioning, even after her father dies.
Even so, I loved Gabi, and she's a great addition to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks conversation. I hope that Quintero writes another book about Gabi's life at Berkeley.
1. It's super-feminist, and points out a lot of the double-standards that make it hard to be a gal.
2. Gabi is super-likable and has a great voice. She's funny and intelligent and self-aware, which made me care about the run-of-the-mill circumstances of her life.
And I guess it's not accurate to say that the circumstances of her life are run-of-the-mill; It's just all stuff that's pretty common in middle grade and YA fiction. Clearly, not all (or even a majority) of teens have meth-addicted fathers who die of overdoses -- but dead parents seem to crop up a lot in teen novels. This book also deals with rape and teen pregnancy, so there's a lot of heavy shit going on. If I had any other complaint, it would be that Gabi deals with all this trauma way too easily. She seems relatively well-functioning, even after her father dies.
Even so, I loved Gabi, and she's a great addition to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks conversation. I hope that Quintero writes another book about Gabi's life at Berkeley.
So close to 5 stars. I LOVED Gabi's voice. The dialogue and thoughts were so real. There was just something a tad cliched about the gay friend, the awesome English teacher, the asshole date rapist...But I will definitely be recommending this to my more mature students, especially all the smart Latinas in my classes.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Love, love, loved this book! Gabi struggles through her senior year in high school with all the highs and lows. What a great character Gabi is, very strong and sassy.
i honestly didn't think I'd like this book this much which is why i kept ignoring it but i love it!
Gabi, A Girl in Pieces is a beautiful, lyrical, and truly stunning debut novel by Isabel Quintero. Written in diary form, the novel traces Gabi's senior year in high school as she finds her strength and voice through poetry (reading and writing it), learns to love herself and celebrate her "beautifully crazy and colorful all-American family." Gabi's voice is not cliched teen shtick portrayed in teen magazines and so much of popular culture. Instead, hers is honest, raw, vulgar, heartbreaking, hilarious, moving, painful, aware. Quintero explores intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality without being preachy; she writes movingly about rape culture ("boys will be boys") from a teen's point of view. Without knowing it, Gabi is an intersectional feminist and also everything that is a 17-18-year-old trying to figure out her life and her path in all of its awkwardness, humiliation, beauty, revelations, and lessons hard-won. I can't wait to read more of Quintero's work. After reading this novel, I'm not at all surprised by the critical accolades it (and she) has received.