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A review by pastelwriter
Different for Boys by Patrick Ness
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
3.0
Hhmm… I have complex feelings about this book.
On the one hand, I can see the vision of this. It very clearly is addressing issues of censorship. It had the reader contemplate what is typically deemed “worthy” of being censored vs what one could want to self-censor. It’s this idea that usually profanity and sexual acts are typically considered (especially in the US, and especially when talking about queer people) necessary to censor. However, it explores the notion that sometimes there are things in our lives that maybe are not perceived as being necessary to be censored, but that are still worthy of being private. That there are things we don’t have to share with the world because they’re that special.
However, I feel like this book reads more like a short story that needed more development. There was simply not enough here for any of the characters to truly have any depth to them. They all fell into different stereotypes in order for the story to shallowly explore some of its themes. If Ness had developed the story further, however, and been able to use the black-out in more moments to build significance, this could have truly been amazing.
As it stands, I don’t regret reading this at all, but I was left wanting more from it.
On the one hand, I can see the vision of this. It very clearly is addressing issues of censorship. It had the reader contemplate what is typically deemed “worthy” of being censored vs what one could want to self-censor. It’s this idea that usually profanity and sexual acts are typically considered (especially in the US, and especially when talking about queer people) necessary to censor. However, it explores the notion that sometimes there are things in our lives that maybe are not perceived as being necessary to be censored, but that are still worthy of being private. That there are things we don’t have to share with the world because they’re that special.
However, I feel like this book reads more like a short story that needed more development. There was simply not enough here for any of the characters to truly have any depth to them. They all fell into different stereotypes in order for the story to shallowly explore some of its themes. If Ness had developed the story further, however, and been able to use the black-out in more moments to build significance, this could have truly been amazing.
As it stands, I don’t regret reading this at all, but I was left wanting more from it.