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A review by paragraphsandpages
Something Like Gravity by Amber Smith
1.0
I had high hopes for this one, because I always love queer contemporaries, but this just wasn't it.
The biggest thing for me was that it was just all, kind of, boring? Not much happened, and there was never much to get me into the book itself. It was largely about dealing with the past, and while books like that can be very good, this one still had so many scenes going on in the present as well, except they never really led to anything at all. There was just, not much, which feels odd considering how many emotional/relationship plot lines were actually being juggled all at once.
I also just, ended up really disliking, or well despising, Maia. It's honestly really hard to get me to dislike a narrator in a book, because I usually find myself understanding them on some level, but I just couldn't handle her. She's actually just a pathological liar, and couldn't tell the truth ever, basically, but when this is brought up in the book, it's just a quick drop of it and then the story moves on? Like please, get help??? I also just wasn't just finding her compelling, even before I started disliking her, and found her sections the most bothersome to get through, even though I liked her audiobook narrator.
I don't feel like I can really speak on the trans rep, but overall, I don't know how well this was done overall. I've seen many complaints in other reviews, and there were definitely so many triggering scenes that could have been done better/less graphically. There were also many things I wish could've been expanded on more, especially when it came to Chris's relationships with his mom and Mai. It was an almost 400-page book, where not much really happened, and yet this all still managed to feel glossed over? This aspect of the book was definitely what made me request this book in the first place, so I was frustrated with how it overall was handled.
Overall, this really just wasn't the book for me, and I do wish I had DNFed when I first realized, instead of spending the rest of my afternoon finishing it.
The biggest thing for me was that it was just all, kind of, boring? Not much happened, and there was never much to get me into the book itself. It was largely about dealing with the past, and while books like that can be very good, this one still had so many scenes going on in the present as well, except they never really led to anything at all. There was just, not much, which feels odd considering how many emotional/relationship plot lines were actually being juggled all at once.
I also just, ended up really disliking, or well despising, Maia. It's honestly really hard to get me to dislike a narrator in a book, because I usually find myself understanding them on some level, but I just couldn't handle her. She's actually just a pathological liar, and couldn't tell the truth ever, basically, but when this is brought up in the book, it's just a quick drop of it and then the story moves on? Like please, get help??? I also just wasn't just finding her compelling, even before I started disliking her, and found her sections the most bothersome to get through, even though I liked her audiobook narrator.
I don't feel like I can really speak on the trans rep, but overall, I don't know how well this was done overall. I've seen many complaints in other reviews, and there were definitely so many triggering scenes that could have been done better/less graphically. There were also many things I wish could've been expanded on more, especially when it came to Chris's relationships with his mom and Mai. It was an almost 400-page book, where not much really happened, and yet this all still managed to feel glossed over? This aspect of the book was definitely what made me request this book in the first place, so I was frustrated with how it overall was handled.
Overall, this really just wasn't the book for me, and I do wish I had DNFed when I first realized, instead of spending the rest of my afternoon finishing it.