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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This one hurt… I don’t know why, it might be just bad timing, and I’m not even Catholic… but still it hurt.
The last 20% or so was way religious for me…
Overall I don’t even know why I finished this one.
The last 20% or so was way religious for me…
Overall I don’t even know why I finished this one.
very sad but so so good. probably should have a warning it’s very sad. i loved it and i love kelly quindlen books
3.5 stars
This review can also be found on my blog.
Oof, this was a tough read. As the blurb states, this is about a girl falling in love with her best friend and struggling with those feelings. What the blurb leaves out is that both girls attend Catholic school and that their faith is quite important to them, as well as the people around them. Having grown up surrounded by plenty of Catholic family members, I found this quite an interesting slant to things, but I can definitely see that making this a difficult or impossible read for some people.
She wakes, hours later, in terror. She sits straight up in bed with her heart sprinting in her chest. Her face and neck are damp with cold sweat. She sweeps the back of her hand across her forehead and remembers, with the force of a stone slinging down into her belly, that she had been dreaming about God.
I thought Kelly Quindlen did an excellent job portraying high school friendships. The kids were all goofy and raucous and constantly referencing inside jokes. Unfortunately, it was so realistic that it grated on me at times and I found it a bit over-the-top and obnoxious. But I can respect the fact that this book was certainly not written for a 27-year-old, so the things that bother me aren’t likely to bother a teenage reader. And in a way it was quite nostalgic. I’ve had friendships like those and they are something very high school. Additionally, juggling a cast of six characters is quite difficult, but Quindlen handles it well. They are all their own discrete people with different mannerisms.
She tries to ask God, but she can’t seem to find God anywhere.
As I’ve already stated, I found the religious aspect to be quite interesting. Hannah struggles deeply with what she’s always been told about gay people contrasted with the feelings she herself is feeling. There’s a lot of potentially triggering content, as Hannah literally tries to pray the gay away. The scenes with her begging God for answers were absolutely heartbreaking and, while not really religious myself, I desperately hoped she would find a way to reconcile her faith with her sexuality. And it is really nice to see a book that seeks to find a connection between queerness and religion rather than abandoning faith entirely due to conflict. I think a lot of religious, particularly Catholic, folks in the lgbtq community will see themselves in this and appreciate it.
Sometimes I think God reacted the way he did because he was so, so anguished that Adam and Eve hated something about themselves. They didn’t realize how beautiful they were in the Garden. They didn’t realize how perfect they were in their love. When their eyes were opened—when they saw that they were naked—they felt as if they had to cover themselves. They thought what God had made was shameful and embarrassing and wrong. Can you imagine how that made God feel? How his heart must have ached to see them denying their beauty, their humanity, in front of him like that? It’s the most heartrending part of the story.
Overall, I think this is quite an important book for young adults. It offers a new path that I think a lot of stories bypass. And that’s fair, I can see why religion is hard for a lot of lgbtq people, but I can also see how it helps others. This is a tough read, but it’s also an important story of self-revelation and self-acceptance. I definitely recommend it if you think you’d find these topics interesting, or if you’re intrigued by any aspect of the premise.
This review can also be found on my blog.
Oof, this was a tough read. As the blurb states, this is about a girl falling in love with her best friend and struggling with those feelings. What the blurb leaves out is that both girls attend Catholic school and that their faith is quite important to them, as well as the people around them. Having grown up surrounded by plenty of Catholic family members, I found this quite an interesting slant to things, but I can definitely see that making this a difficult or impossible read for some people.
She wakes, hours later, in terror. She sits straight up in bed with her heart sprinting in her chest. Her face and neck are damp with cold sweat. She sweeps the back of her hand across her forehead and remembers, with the force of a stone slinging down into her belly, that she had been dreaming about God.
I thought Kelly Quindlen did an excellent job portraying high school friendships. The kids were all goofy and raucous and constantly referencing inside jokes. Unfortunately, it was so realistic that it grated on me at times and I found it a bit over-the-top and obnoxious. But I can respect the fact that this book was certainly not written for a 27-year-old, so the things that bother me aren’t likely to bother a teenage reader. And in a way it was quite nostalgic. I’ve had friendships like those and they are something very high school. Additionally, juggling a cast of six characters is quite difficult, but Quindlen handles it well. They are all their own discrete people with different mannerisms.
She tries to ask God, but she can’t seem to find God anywhere.
As I’ve already stated, I found the religious aspect to be quite interesting. Hannah struggles deeply with what she’s always been told about gay people contrasted with the feelings she herself is feeling. There’s a lot of potentially triggering content, as Hannah literally tries to pray the gay away. The scenes with her begging God for answers were absolutely heartbreaking and, while not really religious myself, I desperately hoped she would find a way to reconcile her faith with her sexuality. And it is really nice to see a book that seeks to find a connection between queerness and religion rather than abandoning faith entirely due to conflict. I think a lot of religious, particularly Catholic, folks in the lgbtq community will see themselves in this and appreciate it.
Sometimes I think God reacted the way he did because he was so, so anguished that Adam and Eve hated something about themselves. They didn’t realize how beautiful they were in the Garden. They didn’t realize how perfect they were in their love. When their eyes were opened—when they saw that they were naked—they felt as if they had to cover themselves. They thought what God had made was shameful and embarrassing and wrong. Can you imagine how that made God feel? How his heart must have ached to see them denying their beauty, their humanity, in front of him like that? It’s the most heartrending part of the story.
Overall, I think this is quite an important book for young adults. It offers a new path that I think a lot of stories bypass. And that’s fair, I can see why religion is hard for a lot of lgbtq people, but I can also see how it helps others. This is a tough read, but it’s also an important story of self-revelation and self-acceptance. I definitely recommend it if you think you’d find these topics interesting, or if you’re intrigued by any aspect of the premise.
Just not in the right mind to read this. Felt on the verge of trauma porn so wanted to stop before that point. Was also lacking in diversity and highly religious so probably not my cuppa tea anyway.
This book was very heavy and hard to get into at first, but I think that the author did a really beautiful job portraying Hannah’s inner struggle. There were a lot of moments near the end that really touched my heart and made me feel a lot. The way shame in particular was portrayed felt really accurate, and I appreciate that while this book is heavy it ended in a way that felt hopeful.
First of all, I need a four and a half star option for this app. Second, I only took this long to finish the book bc i got busy w school and it did start a bit slow to me but cut to me last night crying and screaming over the middle and last chapters. I felt sm of it in my SOUL. Read this book if u like crying <3
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A Non-Review
This is my second time reading HNITS (1st read: 5 stars; 2nd read: 4 stars) and it still hurts a little to relive parts of my teenage years through Hannah and Baker.
Told entirely through Hannah’s third-person point of view, this YA is angsty, dramatic, yet sweet and tender. I fully root for Hannah and Baker to be together from page one, and despite all the awful things they did to their friends and each other, I love them both. I think the self discovery and religious belief aspects of the story are handled pretty well, too, and everything that happened is oh-so-relatable.
* The story takes place in a Catholic high school in year 2012. Both Hannah and Baker were born in 1994.
** The font for the paperback version seems to be Baskerville and not very readable for me. I ended up reading the ebook anyway.
Buddy read with Gabriella!
This is my second time reading HNITS (1st read: 5 stars; 2nd read: 4 stars) and it still hurts a little to relive parts of my teenage years through Hannah and Baker.
Told entirely through Hannah’s third-person point of view, this YA is angsty, dramatic, yet sweet and tender. I fully root for Hannah and Baker to be together from page one, and despite all the awful things they did to their friends and each other, I love them both. I think the self discovery and religious belief aspects of the story are handled pretty well, too, and everything that happened is oh-so-relatable.
* The story takes place in a Catholic high school in year 2012. Both Hannah and Baker were born in 1994.
** The font for the paperback version seems to be Baskerville and not very readable for me. I ended up reading the ebook anyway.
Buddy read with Gabriella!