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inkorkeys 's review for:
The Stone Rainbow
by Liane Shaw
The Stone Rainbow by Liane Shaw (out 17th of September 2019)
The Stone Rainbow is about Jack, a gay teenager in a small town dealing with everything that comes along with that stigma and having the courage to make things happen, namely the towns first pride parade.
This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Honestly, if I had read this maybe, two years ago, it would have been a five-star read based on the fact that it’s a positive queer YA book. Two years ago, that’s all I needed to love something like this. However, over the past two years there has been a change in queer books published. Namely, there has been an amazing swell of own voice novels, written well, and subverting or completely doing away with the usual tropes that befall queer books. Suddenly, because there is so much more choice in the YA world for queer books, I’m no longer so easily impressed.
Overall, I liked the plot and direction of the novel and I thought Shaw did a really good job of addressing issues of masculinity, mental health and how not everywhere is as progressive as it should be. I enjoyed the diversity, particularly the disability rep and even though I thought the side characters could have been fleshed out more, I also really like the characters of Ryan and Cody, if only because I thought they were the most interesting and multifaceted characters that I would have liked more time to explore.
My main issues came down to our protagonist, Jack and the writing.
In terms of the writing, it was a little too in Jacks head the entire time, and that resulted in a whole lot of tell and almost no show. We were just presented information as fact from Jacks mind, but we were never given any actual evidence to back any of it up, to give is a sense of reality. For instance, in the beginning Jack is swimming, he hits his head. something that is very simple, but we didn’t see Jack hit his head, we just had jack relay the info to us after the fact. Or, possibly my biggest gripe: Jack is constantly calling his small town backwards and hick, talking about all the inherent and rampant homophobia, but we never get any actual scenes of these things until the middle to end of the book. There was no present, evidence of homophobia or even bullies really to give these claims any foundation to build off of.
The character of Jack himself was just a tad…annoying to me. He came off as one of those characters that nick picks everyone around them in a negative light without ever having any factual evidence to back up his statements. It seemed as though he had this cartoonish perception of what a small town should be like and then forced those stereotypes on those around him. Another for instance is the rumors. Supposedly the school is flush with rumors about Jack, yes, that he’s gay, but also that he’s a drug dealer. It was never addressed why this was a rumor, and once again we never saw any evidence of these rumors.
The romance was cute, with an added meet-cute, if not a little insta-lovey, but in a small enough way that I could get over it and still enjoy the budding romance. I also loved the desire for social change and the active steps they took to create their own small piece of progress.
Overall, while not my favourite queer contemporary, I think it has potential, and perhaps a younger reader, not so well versed in queer literature, would really get something more out of this than I did.
I received an ARC from netgalley.
The Stone Rainbow is about Jack, a gay teenager in a small town dealing with everything that comes along with that stigma and having the courage to make things happen, namely the towns first pride parade.
This was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Honestly, if I had read this maybe, two years ago, it would have been a five-star read based on the fact that it’s a positive queer YA book. Two years ago, that’s all I needed to love something like this. However, over the past two years there has been a change in queer books published. Namely, there has been an amazing swell of own voice novels, written well, and subverting or completely doing away with the usual tropes that befall queer books. Suddenly, because there is so much more choice in the YA world for queer books, I’m no longer so easily impressed.
Overall, I liked the plot and direction of the novel and I thought Shaw did a really good job of addressing issues of masculinity, mental health and how not everywhere is as progressive as it should be. I enjoyed the diversity, particularly the disability rep and even though I thought the side characters could have been fleshed out more, I also really like the characters of Ryan and Cody, if only because I thought they were the most interesting and multifaceted characters that I would have liked more time to explore.
My main issues came down to our protagonist, Jack and the writing.
In terms of the writing, it was a little too in Jacks head the entire time, and that resulted in a whole lot of tell and almost no show. We were just presented information as fact from Jacks mind, but we were never given any actual evidence to back any of it up, to give is a sense of reality. For instance, in the beginning Jack is swimming, he hits his head. something that is very simple, but we didn’t see Jack hit his head, we just had jack relay the info to us after the fact. Or, possibly my biggest gripe: Jack is constantly calling his small town backwards and hick, talking about all the inherent and rampant homophobia, but we never get any actual scenes of these things until the middle to end of the book. There was no present, evidence of homophobia or even bullies really to give these claims any foundation to build off of.
The character of Jack himself was just a tad…annoying to me. He came off as one of those characters that nick picks everyone around them in a negative light without ever having any factual evidence to back up his statements. It seemed as though he had this cartoonish perception of what a small town should be like and then forced those stereotypes on those around him. Another for instance is the rumors. Supposedly the school is flush with rumors about Jack, yes, that he’s gay, but also that he’s a drug dealer. It was never addressed why this was a rumor, and once again we never saw any evidence of these rumors.
The romance was cute, with an added meet-cute, if not a little insta-lovey, but in a small enough way that I could get over it and still enjoy the budding romance. I also loved the desire for social change and the active steps they took to create their own small piece of progress.
Overall, while not my favourite queer contemporary, I think it has potential, and perhaps a younger reader, not so well versed in queer literature, would really get something more out of this than I did.
I received an ARC from netgalley.