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Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

401 reviews

emotional inspiring reflective 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

I loved Ezra from the first minute and I wanted to punch Felix a little bit for most of the book. But the story grew on me and I ended up really liking it's. Now I'm just sad there's not too much Fanart available.

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emotional lighthearted reflective 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

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challenging emotional mysterious tense medium-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: Complicated

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense 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: Yes

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective 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

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emotional hopeful inspiring 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

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I don't really know where I should start, so I'll begin with the language.
It's informal, sometimes very informal but at the same time very realistically how people and especially young adults/teenagers speak. I liked that Kacen Kallender were able to capture that so well, even though that meant a lot of "fuck"s and "shit"s. Meanwhile, I wasn't the biggest fan of the narrating style per se, the choice of words just wasn't very poetic but realistic, but this isn't really a critique because we all know I have a bias for poetic language and expression.
Onto the plot: I was surprised how the author was able to cover so many different topics in one book (like yeah, it had 350 pages but still...) and execute them all so well. With Felix, they created a very unique personality, whose thoughts and feelings the reader gets to experience very detailed and non-filtered. The whole thing with the struggle of (gender-)identity was something I personally could really relate to even though I'm not trans. But this kind of questioning yourself and wanting to find out who you are and if you even want to label yourself was beautifully portrayed.
But: Sometimes it was also hard to understand Felix, just because he's so different (from his personality) than I am and therefore acted sometimes like the complete opposite of what I would have done. Kacen Kallender keeps him a very human and realistic character and clearly shows everyone else's flaws, too, so you have to accept their misbehaviour and mistakes in order to love them unconditionally. And again, I loved the realistic aspect of that, especially the conflict between Felix and his father (just because of the portrayal).
I have just one thing to criticise and that is that the ending almost felt too good. Everyone ends up with the person they want to be with, the whole identity struggle is pretty much solved and also the family and school conflicts, too, so yeah - that was the only less realistic aspect maybe. But again this is not entirely negative because of course the book has to bring an end to all these topics when it ends, too.
"Felix ever after" is a book that made me think, that gave me comfort and at the same time discomfort, made me laugh and made me sad - it was a book I sacrificed my sleep for. So yeah, it was pretty good.

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ren_the_hobbit's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 25%

High school setting was triggering

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective 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: No

A story that truly has my heart. This is the coming of age and self discovery of Felix Love, a young trans boy who is just trying to find his place in the world. A heartbreaking prank leads to a revenge plot that opens up a host of challenging feelings for Felix. This story beautifully chronicles the journey of self worth, love, and understanding one’s identity in a world determined to hold you back. Felix Ever After was a bit of tear jerker and also a story that I’ll always hold close to my heart.

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emotional hopeful inspiring 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

(4.5/5) This was such a heartwarming story. I picked up this book from a queer library as a way of promoting banned books, and I’m so glad I picked this one.

But this book was an absolute joy to read. The writing style was simple yet addicting, I found myself saying “just one more chapter” many times. I highly recommend to any queer book lovers of any age but especially to young queer teens of color who are struggling to figure themselves out and where they see themselves in the world.

Beautiful story and a great book to end pride month with.

-*small spoilers?*-

My only reason for not giving it five stars is just because I’m not a personal fan of the ‘catfishing’ trope and just the general YA trend of main characters not being very good friends. It’s not bad at all, as it is the main character’s story and it’s fitting for a young character like Felix to go through this journey to understand who’s important to him. Just my own personal nit picky opinion with a trend I’ve seen in YA books. Side characters can easily feel like they’ve been written just to further the main characters plot which isn’t necessarily bad, there’s just an extra depth to a story when you can see these side characters and imagine they have their own little life outside the book. But again, not a huge deal, I still completely fell in love with Leah and Ezra.

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