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A review by camokclay
A World Between by Emily Hashimoto
slow-paced
1.5
Where to start…
The unrelenting liberalism has got to be the thing that annoyed me most 😭 Eleanor annoyed me most. She’s constantly going on about how she cares so much and wants to make a positive impact on the world meanwhile they both recognize the role they’re playing in gentrification and continue doing it relentlessly…? Eleanor *vaguely* brings up Israel/Zionism in her family and community but in no way at all comments on or condemns the genocide being enacted upon Palestinians… (it’s Free Palestine over here in case you didn’t know so 🖕🏽). Her “caring” for community is so ingenuine beyond wanting to make herself feel good it’s soooo annoying to hear about so constantly. Mind you more than half the time a Black person is brought up and described, their skin is depicted as “beautiful black skin”…? Did you know that actually tells us nothing about their skin tone?
Secondly the romance and writing just wasn’t that good. Tbh I was rooting more for Dhaval & Leena more than I was for Eleanor & Leena. I feel like the writing wasn’t the most sharp… like Leena & Eleanor had a lot of similarities with how their characters behaved and it just landed to me as an inability to differentiate them in meaningful ways. Like yeah they’re depicted as being opposites with one being more detail oriented vs messy but the way they interacted with each other felt as thought the behaviors would just get flip flopped between the two during different time periods.
MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE OF THE BOOK—there was no reason this book needed to be nearly this long!!! But if you’re going to have the book be this long at LEAST GIVE US THEIR ZODIAC SIGNS. It’s ridiculous this book covered all 12 of the months but not once were birthdays celebrated… so unrealistic and what a poor choice of detail to skip over 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 what makes this even more annoying is how they bring up zodiacs and how much gays love them…like ok yes now tell us what the characters are. This was a general theme in the book. There were so many things they could have elaborated or explored more and didn’t in favor of describing minute details that are way less relevant to the story.
While this book was very gay, not much of it was queer at all. Not really trying to push beyond or have us question or think more deeply about anything…like let’s be so clear that Leena did not have to come out to her family to live a happy gay life (s/o to Hijab Butch Blues for pushing me to realize this). This book draws the conclusions that this really should be the case. similarly with the comments about how bisexuality was handled *poorly* Leena did not have to be with a man to have her gayness negated and the author could have done a hell of a lot more to actually explore and emphasize this.
What a performative flop. Will not read another of their books. Not surprised this was recommended to me by white gay ppl
The unrelenting liberalism has got to be the thing that annoyed me most 😭 Eleanor annoyed me most. She’s constantly going on about how she cares so much and wants to make a positive impact on the world meanwhile they both recognize the role they’re playing in gentrification and continue doing it relentlessly…? Eleanor *vaguely* brings up Israel/Zionism in her family and community but in no way at all comments on or condemns the genocide being enacted upon Palestinians… (it’s Free Palestine over here in case you didn’t know so 🖕🏽). Her “caring” for community is so ingenuine beyond wanting to make herself feel good it’s soooo annoying to hear about so constantly. Mind you more than half the time a Black person is brought up and described, their skin is depicted as “beautiful black skin”…? Did you know that actually tells us nothing about their skin tone?
Secondly the romance and writing just wasn’t that good. Tbh I was rooting more for Dhaval & Leena more than I was for Eleanor & Leena. I feel like the writing wasn’t the most sharp… like Leena & Eleanor had a lot of similarities with how their characters behaved and it just landed to me as an inability to differentiate them in meaningful ways. Like yeah they’re depicted as being opposites with one being more detail oriented vs messy but the way they interacted with each other felt as thought the behaviors would just get flip flopped between the two during different time periods.
MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE OF THE BOOK—there was no reason this book needed to be nearly this long!!! But if you’re going to have the book be this long at LEAST GIVE US THEIR ZODIAC SIGNS. It’s ridiculous this book covered all 12 of the months but not once were birthdays celebrated… so unrealistic and what a poor choice of detail to skip over 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 what makes this even more annoying is how they bring up zodiacs and how much gays love them…like ok yes now tell us what the characters are. This was a general theme in the book. There were so many things they could have elaborated or explored more and didn’t in favor of describing minute details that are way less relevant to the story.
While this book was very gay, not much of it was queer at all. Not really trying to push beyond or have us question or think more deeply about anything…
What a performative flop. Will not read another of their books. Not surprised this was recommended to me by white gay ppl