Scan barcode
A review by letsgolesbians
The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls by Jessica Spotswood
4.0
I love girl squads. I read a lot of girl gang books when I was growing up, and I reread the Sisterhood books every few years to get my fill of strong and important female friendships. I loved this book, even though it was, as other reviewers have said, a little predictable. But I love books that follow multiple people, wherein their relationships with each other are the foundation, and where sisterhood (either biologically or via found families) is shown to be as important, if not more important, than romance.
There were a lot of pop culture references in this, and that's where I knocked off a full star. Not because the references were there, as I don't think it's a huge deal to have characters in contemporary fiction talk about shows and books and podcasts. But Vi was a lesbian, and The 100 was only condemned at the end of the book, with the rest of the references acting like the show didn't fuck over its queer female audience. And Des read as acearo to me, so it annoyed me a whole lot that Erasuredale was constantly praised. Sorry, but if you have a lesbian character and a possible acearo (or ace and allo or allo and aro, all things possible since Des didn't specifically identify as any of these), I think it's really inappropriate to include praise for a show that erased the identity of one of (if not the only) mainstream acearo characters in existence and allowed one of its stars to say that a f/f relationship between the two major female characters would only ever be fic. There are SO many Erasuredale references in here, and as an ace lesbian, it got to be really grating to me after a while. Aces and aros are treated like garbage by the rest of the queer community, and the discourse surrounding Riverdale has made it obvious that y'all only care about the allo folx.
Without all the Erasuredale noise, I would have given this 5 stars, easily.
There were a lot of pop culture references in this, and that's where I knocked off a full star. Not because the references were there, as I don't think it's a huge deal to have characters in contemporary fiction talk about shows and books and podcasts. But Vi was a lesbian, and The 100 was only condemned at the end of the book, with the rest of the references acting like the show didn't fuck over its queer female audience. And Des read as acearo to me, so it annoyed me a whole lot that Erasuredale was constantly praised. Sorry, but if you have a lesbian character and a possible acearo (or ace and allo or allo and aro, all things possible since Des didn't specifically identify as any of these), I think it's really inappropriate to include praise for a show that erased the identity of one of (if not the only) mainstream acearo characters in existence and allowed one of its stars to say that a f/f relationship between the two major female characters would only ever be fic. There are SO many Erasuredale references in here, and as an ace lesbian, it got to be really grating to me after a while. Aces and aros are treated like garbage by the rest of the queer community, and the discourse surrounding Riverdale has made it obvious that y'all only care about the allo folx.
Without all the Erasuredale noise, I would have given this 5 stars, easily.