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asiamd's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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? Yes
4.0
This book was short but I feel it did a great job of depicting the horrors of conversion therapy while also giving the readers hope for the main characters. I also loved the voice of the main character because it felt like I was with her experiencing these things with her and rooting for her to not give up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Torture, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, Deadnaming, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, and Transphobia
Moderate: Alcohol, Bullying, and Suicide attempt
genevieve_eggleston's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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? Yes
4.0
This was an extremely intriguing novel. It definitely delves into sensitive subject matter and deals with severe homophobia, so approach it with caution if that’s triggering for you, but it’s also eye opening and inspirational.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness, Transphobia, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Religious bigotry, Torture, Abandonment, Lesbophobia, Blood, Forced institutionalization, Outing, Physical abuse, Car accident, Emotional abuse, Gore, Grief, and Homophobia
Moderate: Misogyny, Self harm, Violence, Deadnaming, Medical content, Sexual content, Eating disorder, Dysphoria, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Hate crime, Bullying, Suicide attempt, Cursing, and Sexism
Minor: Domestic abuse, Pregnancy, and Child abuse
isco1428's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.25
This book felt way too fast paced for its own good. I think the book would have benefited tremendously from another 100-200 pages and a solid editor. The characters were almost a hit for me but we get so little time with the majority of them that they end up falling flat 99% of the time. There is also a very strange attempt at a redemption arc for one character and, in my opinion, it felt superficial. What is motivating and driving these characters? We’re meant to cheer them on purely on principle but what makes their stories any different than others? The characters end up feeling like an amalgamation of tropes with homogenized backgrounds. Overall, the book ends up feeling one note — like darting toward the finish line only to just…stop.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deadnaming, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Outing, Biphobia, Homophobia, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Forced institutionalization, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Abandonment, and Ableism
starship_olympus's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
I just grabbed this from the LGBTQ+ section at my library because if there's anything to do with Orpheus and Eurydice in any form of media I'm there for it.
But the writing style wasn't really for me, and I wasn't invested in the story. I almost DNF but I had a few hours free so I kinda just skimmed the book stopping to read every few pages.
I can definitely see why this book could be loved by some, if it had been my cup of tea I would've been all over the prose, the characters, their differences and their love. I did want a 'happy' ending (as happy as an ending of this book could be)and I am glad we got it, with the girls and some kids escaping the camp, and the camp (most likely?) being brought down but the journey there wasn't for me.
I know Orpheus is a tragedy, and there was tragedy here. It's not a book for the faint of heart, or an easy read. Even just skimming it I had an emotional reaction to what was going on. I think it could be a wonderful and visceral and beautiful novella.
But the writing style wasn't really for me, and I wasn't invested in the story. I almost DNF but I had a few hours free so I kinda just skimmed the book stopping to read every few pages.
I can definitely see why this book could be loved by some, if it had been my cup of tea I would've been all over the prose, the characters, their differences and their love. I did want a 'happy' ending (as happy as an ending of this book could be)
I know Orpheus is a tragedy, and there was tragedy here. It's not a book for the faint of heart, or an easy read. Even just skimming it I had an emotional reaction to what was going on. I think it could be a wonderful and visceral and beautiful novella.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Outing, Self harm, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Body shaming, Child abuse, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Dysphoria, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Biphobia, Bullying, Homophobia, Medical content, Mental illness, Lesbophobia, Suicide, Torture, Transphobia, Acephobia/Arophobia, and Deadnaming
Moderate: Abandonment, Ableism, Addiction, Alcohol, and Bullying
Minor: Car accident, Cursing, Death, and Death of parent
emmazan's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Biphobia, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Lesbophobia, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, Religious bigotry, and Transphobia
Moderate: Sexual content
queerolderdaughter13's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
First of all,please please please PLEASE check the trigger warnings before reading this book.This book is strong,be safe.
I loved this,so much.The Greek mythology references were a bonus too.
This felt like it put the queer experience into words,I LOVED IT.
Found family at it’s highest.
I couldn’t love it more tbh
Some of my favorite quotes cuz why not:
“During the service I think about Persephone, how the girl was pulled away from everything she’d ever known and taken to a strange world. Or Atalanta. In these myths, girls are always being changed or taken by men, their voices, their protests ignored. And the queer girls, like Atalanta, are forced to become something else.”
“In the mirror I look mythic. Like I could be on TV with Mom. I look like the girl who played a young Orpheus before he died. So in love. But also, so tragic. Grammy couldn’t tell that the actor was gay, but I could. Being queer gives you some kind of insight into other queers. I can sense them in my presence like the gods in the myths could find other deities, like Jean did with me that day at church camp. A sixth sense almost.”
“This constant paranoia comes with being closeted in a town so small everyone spends too much time trying to find out everyone else’s secrets just so they don’t expire of boredom. It sounds crazy, but nothing’s safe.”
I live in a small republican town,this hits so hard. (I’m out of the closet and safe now btw)
“Once I knew a boy from church who got found. Later I heard that the boy’s father saw him kissing another boy and tried to exorcise the gay out of them. Beat them with a cane and prayed in tongues until they swore they were cured. Nobody saw either boy again. Their parents sent them away. To be cured by one of the conversion facilities Texas is so proud of, or to be forgotten like yesterday’s sermon: reduced to the memory of a few words and some stray images you can’t place. Two boys. Gone completely. That’s what happens to gay teens in this town. They get disappeared.
Or it’s like what happened with the girls they found last year, girls who never returned. They too got turned into cautionary tales about what happens to queers around here.”
“Eventually we pull onto a private road. There’s a sign that reads FRIENDLY SAVIORS, and I know that I’m being disappeared. It’s then I decide that I’m going to descend into the depths of the underworld just like Orpheus, and I’m going to save the girl I love. Because Orpheus? She’s a girl, who likes girls.”
“She told me she loved me then, and I didn’t answer. I think she thought it was because I didn’t love her back, but really, I just loved her too much, so much that I couldn’t speak. I was too overwhelmed by everything.”
“I don’t respond. I’ve forced myself to go to that strange, calm place that girls can access only when they’re in trouble. The kind where you leave your body like you’re already dead, ball your fists until your fingers turn white, and pretend to be anywhere else but where you are right now. You take a deep breath but don’t exhale, just wait for the violence you know is coming for you. I learned how to do this in kindergarten when boys would throw rocks at me because I didn’t have parents, because I told our teacher I didn’t want a husband, only a pet horse. Even then I knew what I was, though I wasn’t smart enough to hide.
When I learned, finally, that I was gay, I realized I’d always been hiding, but all those years before, I just didn’t know what I was hiding from, why my heart was always racing, why I always felt like I was only mimicking going through the motions of my girlhood.”
Damn just expose me like that
“I realize that a small crowd is gathering around me. A couple of girls and a boy. One of the girls is wearing a T-shirt: “ACCEPT THE SAVIOR INTO YOUR HEART, AND NEVER WANT AGAIN!” It’s then I decide that I’m going to be the biggest, baddest lesbian these hateful freaks have ever seen.”
As you should
“Well, like the rest of you, I sinned as much as I could. Actually, they called me the lesbian Don Juan in my town.”
PLS I LOVE HER
“When I’m done, Char says I’m possessed with something unholy, that I am dirty, infected with the filth of hell. She says it was because I had no mom that I turned out this way.
Then Hyde sets in, though his tone is gentler than Char’s, Grammy must have told them about the wings, because he says that my wings are devil- spawned, proof that I’m twisted, that something was wrong with me from the day I entered this world. He tells me that whenever I feel my old ways coming back, I should visualize what will happen to me if I can’t allow myself to be saved—how hell will claim me like it claimed so many other queers.
As they’re saying these things, I have to remind myself that I’m not disgusting like they say, that there’s nothing really wrong with me.
While it’s happening, I avoid looking at Sarah and meet her gaze only when they’ve moved on to Jason—who confesses that sometimes he wishes he’d never been born at all. They tell him that if he’s going to live in sin, maybe he shouldn’t have. Jason covers his mouth with a shaking hand, and in the light his skin is so sallow that it’s as translucent as paper.”
“The thing about nice homophobes is that they’re the worst kind of homophobe. They’ll smile at you on the street, maybe say that it would be okay if everyone could get married, but wouldn’t it undermine the sanctity of marriage if the gays could too? They lull you into a false sense of security and make you feel safe enough that you’ll let your guard down, and for a moment maybe entertain the idea of dropping your disguise. And then they metaphorically cut your throat.
I learned the type when I was in middle school: the girls who invite you over to dinner, girls whose parents will talk politics at the dinner table and say things about how they don’t mind gay people as long as they don’t have to see them or interact with them. They applaud themselves for their tolerance but vote for politicians who want to make gayness a mental illness again, then smile at you at church the next day. With every action they make to take away your rights, they adopt an air of phony shame, as if they actually cared about the consequences of their beliefs.”
“I know I’ll have to pretend to have become another person, a straight girl—and while I know they can’t make me straight, I’m afraid I’ll begin to believe them when they tell me I’m wrong, doomed.”
“Admitting my gayness out loud—even when I’m lying—is still strange. Even though I’ve been found, I’m not used to being seen. My heart starts beating too fast and I can feel my cheeks flushing hotter as everyone continues to look at me. Sarah raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug back at her.”
(My favorite scene ever)
“She sighs. “Earlier, I guess I thought about women.”
Char starts to open her mouth, but Hyde puts a hand over hers, turns to Sarah. “What did you think about that was sinful?”
Sarah’s got a sort of glimmer in her eyes that I’ve never seen before,
something between terror and rebellion.
“I thought about fucking them. I don’t know about you, Hyde, but I just
love when you’re going down on a girl and her thighs start to shake. Though you probably wouldn’t know about it from firsthand experience.”
Hyde is clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. “Those are sinful things, Sarah. It’s not the Lord that’s causing you to behave in this way.”
I make frantic knife motions under my throat, hoping that she’ll stop, that she’ll save herself, but she ignores me and forges on.
“The last girl called for the Lord when I was done with her. Did that ever happen to you, Char?”
“If the preacher said we were wrong, that we needed to be fixed or we’d end up in hell, then our parents or our guardians would ship us off or send us back to get fixed. And no matter how many times we begged them not to abandon us, no matter how many times we’d told them that these treatments could kill us, that we were being broken, turned into something different, that we didn’t know what would happen to us if things continued this way, that we didn’t know what we would change into, they wouldn’t listen. But still, we told them, told them we were tortured mentally and physically. That they poured hot water on our fingers, that they hooked us up to machines that electrocuted us, that they starved us. That like our older brothers and uncles and fathers who served in war and came back as shells, we too were being hollowed out.
But it didn’t make a difference. Our families gave us up the moment they heard the word “queer.”
One day either we wouldn’t want to come back, or we would come back as someone else. But none of us ever truly returns. And this is why some of the kids cut themselves even if everything sharp has been taken from them. Why some of the kids stand in the football field and scream until they get the raspy feeling in their chests that you get from crying in the cold.”
“You know, the thing about family is that you can choose it. And I choose you.”
“We’ll go to New York to find Leon and Clio. Nobody will bother trying to find us. We’re just gay girls whose bodies became thin air—like all the other gay kids we grew up with. We have vanished. Yet for the first time in both of our lives, we’re visible by choice. And we’re completely free.”
“Maybe I was wrong about my wings. I think that maybe the myth about Orpheus isn’t about losing your love: it is about learning how not to look back.
For a minute, as we begin to walk into the sunlight, I see the two of us like we’ve always been—for thousands of years, since the beginning of time: two girls in the sun, their faces blurring into nothing but brightness as they leave, as they walk into the light, leaving everything behind.”
I loved this,so much.The Greek mythology references were a bonus too.
This felt like it put the queer experience into words,I LOVED IT.
Found family at it’s highest.
I couldn’t love it more tbh
Some of my favorite quotes cuz why not:
“During the service I think about Persephone, how the girl was pulled away from everything she’d ever known and taken to a strange world. Or Atalanta. In these myths, girls are always being changed or taken by men, their voices, their protests ignored. And the queer girls, like Atalanta, are forced to become something else.”
“In the mirror I look mythic. Like I could be on TV with Mom. I look like the girl who played a young Orpheus before he died. So in love. But also, so tragic. Grammy couldn’t tell that the actor was gay, but I could. Being queer gives you some kind of insight into other queers. I can sense them in my presence like the gods in the myths could find other deities, like Jean did with me that day at church camp. A sixth sense almost.”
“This constant paranoia comes with being closeted in a town so small everyone spends too much time trying to find out everyone else’s secrets just so they don’t expire of boredom. It sounds crazy, but nothing’s safe.”
I live in a small republican town,this hits so hard. (I’m out of the closet and safe now btw)
“Once I knew a boy from church who got found. Later I heard that the boy’s father saw him kissing another boy and tried to exorcise the gay out of them. Beat them with a cane and prayed in tongues until they swore they were cured. Nobody saw either boy again. Their parents sent them away. To be cured by one of the conversion facilities Texas is so proud of, or to be forgotten like yesterday’s sermon: reduced to the memory of a few words and some stray images you can’t place. Two boys. Gone completely. That’s what happens to gay teens in this town. They get disappeared.
Or it’s like what happened with the girls they found last year, girls who never returned. They too got turned into cautionary tales about what happens to queers around here.”
“Eventually we pull onto a private road. There’s a sign that reads FRIENDLY SAVIORS, and I know that I’m being disappeared. It’s then I decide that I’m going to descend into the depths of the underworld just like Orpheus, and I’m going to save the girl I love. Because Orpheus? She’s a girl, who likes girls.”
“She told me she loved me then, and I didn’t answer. I think she thought it was because I didn’t love her back, but really, I just loved her too much, so much that I couldn’t speak. I was too overwhelmed by everything.”
“I don’t respond. I’ve forced myself to go to that strange, calm place that girls can access only when they’re in trouble. The kind where you leave your body like you’re already dead, ball your fists until your fingers turn white, and pretend to be anywhere else but where you are right now. You take a deep breath but don’t exhale, just wait for the violence you know is coming for you. I learned how to do this in kindergarten when boys would throw rocks at me because I didn’t have parents, because I told our teacher I didn’t want a husband, only a pet horse. Even then I knew what I was, though I wasn’t smart enough to hide.
When I learned, finally, that I was gay, I realized I’d always been hiding, but all those years before, I just didn’t know what I was hiding from, why my heart was always racing, why I always felt like I was only mimicking going through the motions of my girlhood.”
Damn just expose me like that
“I realize that a small crowd is gathering around me. A couple of girls and a boy. One of the girls is wearing a T-shirt: “ACCEPT THE SAVIOR INTO YOUR HEART, AND NEVER WANT AGAIN!” It’s then I decide that I’m going to be the biggest, baddest lesbian these hateful freaks have ever seen.”
As you should
“Well, like the rest of you, I sinned as much as I could. Actually, they called me the lesbian Don Juan in my town.”
PLS I LOVE HER
“When I’m done, Char says I’m possessed with something unholy, that I am dirty, infected with the filth of hell. She says it was because I had no mom that I turned out this way.
Then Hyde sets in, though his tone is gentler than Char’s, Grammy must have told them about the wings, because he says that my wings are devil- spawned, proof that I’m twisted, that something was wrong with me from the day I entered this world. He tells me that whenever I feel my old ways coming back, I should visualize what will happen to me if I can’t allow myself to be saved—how hell will claim me like it claimed so many other queers.
As they’re saying these things, I have to remind myself that I’m not disgusting like they say, that there’s nothing really wrong with me.
While it’s happening, I avoid looking at Sarah and meet her gaze only when they’ve moved on to Jason—who confesses that sometimes he wishes he’d never been born at all. They tell him that if he’s going to live in sin, maybe he shouldn’t have. Jason covers his mouth with a shaking hand, and in the light his skin is so sallow that it’s as translucent as paper.”
“The thing about nice homophobes is that they’re the worst kind of homophobe. They’ll smile at you on the street, maybe say that it would be okay if everyone could get married, but wouldn’t it undermine the sanctity of marriage if the gays could too? They lull you into a false sense of security and make you feel safe enough that you’ll let your guard down, and for a moment maybe entertain the idea of dropping your disguise. And then they metaphorically cut your throat.
I learned the type when I was in middle school: the girls who invite you over to dinner, girls whose parents will talk politics at the dinner table and say things about how they don’t mind gay people as long as they don’t have to see them or interact with them. They applaud themselves for their tolerance but vote for politicians who want to make gayness a mental illness again, then smile at you at church the next day. With every action they make to take away your rights, they adopt an air of phony shame, as if they actually cared about the consequences of their beliefs.”
“I know I’ll have to pretend to have become another person, a straight girl—and while I know they can’t make me straight, I’m afraid I’ll begin to believe them when they tell me I’m wrong, doomed.”
“Admitting my gayness out loud—even when I’m lying—is still strange. Even though I’ve been found, I’m not used to being seen. My heart starts beating too fast and I can feel my cheeks flushing hotter as everyone continues to look at me. Sarah raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug back at her.”
(My favorite scene ever)
“She sighs. “Earlier, I guess I thought about women.”
Char starts to open her mouth, but Hyde puts a hand over hers, turns to Sarah. “What did you think about that was sinful?”
Sarah’s got a sort of glimmer in her eyes that I’ve never seen before,
something between terror and rebellion.
“I thought about fucking them. I don’t know about you, Hyde, but I just
love when you’re going down on a girl and her thighs start to shake. Though you probably wouldn’t know about it from firsthand experience.”
Hyde is clenching and unclenching his hands into fists. “Those are sinful things, Sarah. It’s not the Lord that’s causing you to behave in this way.”
I make frantic knife motions under my throat, hoping that she’ll stop, that she’ll save herself, but she ignores me and forges on.
“The last girl called for the Lord when I was done with her. Did that ever happen to you, Char?”
“If the preacher said we were wrong, that we needed to be fixed or we’d end up in hell, then our parents or our guardians would ship us off or send us back to get fixed. And no matter how many times we begged them not to abandon us, no matter how many times we’d told them that these treatments could kill us, that we were being broken, turned into something different, that we didn’t know what would happen to us if things continued this way, that we didn’t know what we would change into, they wouldn’t listen. But still, we told them, told them we were tortured mentally and physically. That they poured hot water on our fingers, that they hooked us up to machines that electrocuted us, that they starved us. That like our older brothers and uncles and fathers who served in war and came back as shells, we too were being hollowed out.
But it didn’t make a difference. Our families gave us up the moment they heard the word “queer.”
One day either we wouldn’t want to come back, or we would come back as someone else. But none of us ever truly returns. And this is why some of the kids cut themselves even if everything sharp has been taken from them. Why some of the kids stand in the football field and scream until they get the raspy feeling in their chests that you get from crying in the cold.”
“You know, the thing about family is that you can choose it. And I choose you.”
“We’ll go to New York to find Leon and Clio. Nobody will bother trying to find us. We’re just gay girls whose bodies became thin air—like all the other gay kids we grew up with. We have vanished. Yet for the first time in both of our lives, we’re visible by choice. And we’re completely free.”
“Maybe I was wrong about my wings. I think that maybe the myth about Orpheus isn’t about losing your love: it is about learning how not to look back.
For a minute, as we begin to walk into the sunlight, I see the two of us like we’ve always been—for thousands of years, since the beginning of time: two girls in the sun, their faces blurring into nothing but brightness as they leave, as they walk into the light, leaving everything behind.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Biphobia, Bullying, Car accident, Deadnaming, Death of parent, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Torture, Transphobia, and Violence
toberomanced's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-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? It's complicated
4.0
Haunting, heartbreaking, gorgeous prose
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Deadnaming, Cursing, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Transphobia, and Body shaming
grace007's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Biphobia, Blood, Bullying, Car accident, Deadnaming, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Outing, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Torture, Transphobia, and Violence
Minor: Cursing
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