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A review by jamies_shelves
Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee
3.0
Just like the first book of this series, this book was FILLED with amazing representation! This book followed Bells as the main character, who is a black transgender boy. The other big characters are a half Vietnamese half Chinese bisexual girl, the lesbian she is dating, a half Vietnamese half Chinese gay boy, and a girl who is Hispanic and is the daughter of two smart and well respected women. We also had multiple characters come out as being ace/aro. I don't want to spoil anything and say who, but it happened and they actually used the term asexual and aromantic.
We didn't see parents as much in this story as we did in the first one, but when we did they were completely supportive of their child's sexuality!
My problem with this book was the first fourth of it. It was just a retelling of the first book through Bells' POV and honestly I found it really boring. It also felt extremely rushed as it actually started before the first book did and covered that and all of the events of the first book in only the first 40% of the book. Another reason I wasn't a fan of this was because I was super excited to see what happened after the events of the first book, but instead I had to read it all over again.
Once it got past that I was able to get into the book, and the last 40% was really good and interesting, but I often felt myself wishing that I was still reading through Jess' POV, or that at least it would switch off by chapter. I was way more into what was going on with her and Abby now that Abby lost her powers than what was going on with Bells and Emma.
And while I really liked the second half of the book, I found the last couple of pages to be kind of contrived. It had a feeling of, okay we did the thing so now let's just wrap it up nicely and jump into a place that we can end the book.
I will definitely be reading the next book as I'm invested and want to know how it ends. Some questions I really want answered are about Abby and Claudia. I'm kind of bummed that it's from Emma's perspective though as she's definitely not my favorite character, and like I said, I'm way more invested in Jess and Abby.
We didn't see parents as much in this story as we did in the first one, but when we did they were completely supportive of their child's sexuality!
My problem with this book was the first fourth of it. It was just a retelling of the first book through Bells' POV and honestly I found it really boring. It also felt extremely rushed as it actually started before the first book did and covered that and all of the events of the first book in only the first 40% of the book. Another reason I wasn't a fan of this was because I was super excited to see what happened after the events of the first book, but instead I had to read it all over again.
Once it got past that I was able to get into the book, and the last 40% was really good and interesting, but I often felt myself wishing that I was still reading through Jess' POV, or that at least it would switch off by chapter. I was way more into what was going on with her and Abby now that Abby lost her powers than what was going on with Bells and Emma.
And while I really liked the second half of the book, I found the last couple of pages to be kind of contrived. It had a feeling of, okay we did the thing so now let's just wrap it up nicely and jump into a place that we can end the book.
I will definitely be reading the next book as I'm invested and want to know how it ends. Some questions I really want answered are about Abby and Claudia. I'm kind of bummed that it's from Emma's perspective though as she's definitely not my favorite character, and like I said, I'm way more invested in Jess and Abby.