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A review by asimilarkite
Love Is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson
2.0
So, I wrote a formal review of this book for the YA review group I am in, and I'm going to post it here, but first I want to clarify why I gave this book 2 stars and yet wrote a seemingly super positive review.
This book was good. Objectively good. It was literary and complex and had an interesting character who evolved throughout the story...but I was just...so...bored while I was reading it. It took me LITERALLY two months to read this book because I couldn't motivate myself to pick it up. It's pretty deathly in its pacing, which for me is a problem. I don't generally consider myself a story doorway person primarily, but there needs to be SOME forward momentum, or I just lose all interest. So this was a good book, it just was NOT the book for me. That being said -- here's my pretty positive review for WASHYARG (Washington Young Adult Review Group:
Emily Bird (known preferably as just “Bird”) is an affluent African-American teenager attending a prestigious private school in Washington, D.C. She has the perfect boyfriend, is planning on attending a prestigious college, and everything seems to be going pretty ideally in her life – except for the fact that the world is in a state of crisis due to the rapid spread of a terrifying and deadly strain of the flu, known as the v-flu. When Bird attends a party and ends up in the hospital after blacking out, she starts to question everything she knew. Is her boyfriend really a good guy? Maybe Coffee, the mysterious and attractive Brazilian drug-dealer is better for her? Are her parents involved in a vast international conspiracy somehow having to do with the v-flu? This book addresses weighty issues such as international politics, bioterrorism, loyalty, and friendship using a refreshingly diverse cast of characters that truly reflects the diversity of the world we live in. Well-written and heady, Johnson’s book will probably be most enjoyed by upper high-schoolers who like complex, slow-moving stories with plenty of political intrigue and no easy answers. This is not a book for people who need the plot to move forward swiftly – it is a much more meditative, internal narrative. Readers with patience will be rewarded by a richly detailed, thoughtful story.
This book was good. Objectively good. It was literary and complex and had an interesting character who evolved throughout the story...but I was just...so...bored while I was reading it. It took me LITERALLY two months to read this book because I couldn't motivate myself to pick it up. It's pretty deathly in its pacing, which for me is a problem. I don't generally consider myself a story doorway person primarily, but there needs to be SOME forward momentum, or I just lose all interest. So this was a good book, it just was NOT the book for me. That being said -- here's my pretty positive review for WASHYARG (Washington Young Adult Review Group:
Emily Bird (known preferably as just “Bird”) is an affluent African-American teenager attending a prestigious private school in Washington, D.C. She has the perfect boyfriend, is planning on attending a prestigious college, and everything seems to be going pretty ideally in her life – except for the fact that the world is in a state of crisis due to the rapid spread of a terrifying and deadly strain of the flu, known as the v-flu. When Bird attends a party and ends up in the hospital after blacking out, she starts to question everything she knew. Is her boyfriend really a good guy? Maybe Coffee, the mysterious and attractive Brazilian drug-dealer is better for her? Are her parents involved in a vast international conspiracy somehow having to do with the v-flu? This book addresses weighty issues such as international politics, bioterrorism, loyalty, and friendship using a refreshingly diverse cast of characters that truly reflects the diversity of the world we live in. Well-written and heady, Johnson’s book will probably be most enjoyed by upper high-schoolers who like complex, slow-moving stories with plenty of political intrigue and no easy answers. This is not a book for people who need the plot to move forward swiftly – it is a much more meditative, internal narrative. Readers with patience will be rewarded by a richly detailed, thoughtful story.