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anniekslibrary 's review for:
The Breakup Lists
by Adib Khorram
Many thanks to PRH International for the digital review copy.
I'm a huge fan of Adib Khorram's books, so I already knew I was going to love this, but still I was surprised by how much fun I was having.
The writing was just so incredibly fun, and it made me want to continue reading. I would highly recommend reading this in one sitting if you can because it's exactly that kind of YA romcom, the kind you won't want to put down and is just so fun to consume all at once. I didn't quite manage that this time, and it was a struggle to put this book down!
This book very much stood out to me in writing style. I loved reading the self-censoring Jackson does: striking certain words and phrases from the narration and replacing them by more palatable, but less honest ones. This was a brilliant way of letting us get to know Jackson really well as a main character without having to explicitly tell us that he struggles with saying what he means instead of pleasing the people around him.
Jackson is also deaf and wears hearing aids. I can't speak for the representation, but I did like how we got to experience a large part of what it means to Jackson to be disabled. In dialogue, it would often say "somethingsomething" in places where Jackson doesn't catch what someone is saying, which means that, since we also didn't get that information, we got to experience exactly how frustrating this is for him. I also appreciated the attention to how exhausting his disability can be for him.
And the romance? Is so sweet?? I love love LOVED seeing the budding friendship between Jackson and his crush, Liam, in the beginning of the book. I loved seeing them grow closer together and each thinking the other doesn't feel the same way, so both making terrible choices and creating a real mess.
Jackson's sister, Jasmine, is caught in the crosshairs of this mess, or you could say she firmly inserted herself there, depending how you look at it. I've seen some reviews be very critical of her, and I understand why, but I didn't feel quite that strongly about her. I do think she messed up, but Jackson also could have talked to her more. I think she was realistically flawed. The one thing I didn't like was how she took out her anger with him at school. Since they're siblings, that felt like a step too far, and I feel like it was a betrayal of sibling trust to take a conflict like that outside of their family environment.
I'm a huge fan of Adib Khorram's books, so I already knew I was going to love this, but still I was surprised by how much fun I was having.
The writing was just so incredibly fun, and it made me want to continue reading. I would highly recommend reading this in one sitting if you can because it's exactly that kind of YA romcom, the kind you won't want to put down and is just so fun to consume all at once. I didn't quite manage that this time, and it was a struggle to put this book down!
This book very much stood out to me in writing style. I loved reading the self-censoring Jackson does: striking certain words and phrases from the narration and replacing them by more palatable, but less honest ones. This was a brilliant way of letting us get to know Jackson really well as a main character without having to explicitly tell us that he struggles with saying what he means instead of pleasing the people around him.
Jackson is also deaf and wears hearing aids. I can't speak for the representation, but I did like how we got to experience a large part of what it means to Jackson to be disabled. In dialogue, it would often say "somethingsomething" in places where Jackson doesn't catch what someone is saying, which means that, since we also didn't get that information, we got to experience exactly how frustrating this is for him. I also appreciated the attention to how exhausting his disability can be for him.
And the romance? Is so sweet?? I love love LOVED seeing the budding friendship between Jackson and his crush, Liam, in the beginning of the book. I loved seeing them grow closer together and each thinking the other doesn't feel the same way, so both making terrible choices and creating a real mess.
Jackson's sister, Jasmine, is caught in the crosshairs of this mess, or you could say she firmly inserted herself there, depending how you look at it. I've seen some reviews be very critical of her, and I understand why, but I didn't feel quite that strongly about her. I do think she messed up, but Jackson also could have talked to her more. I think she was realistically flawed. The one thing I didn't like was how she took out her anger with him at school. Since they're siblings, that felt like a step too far, and I feel like it was a betrayal of sibling trust to take a conflict like that outside of their family environment.