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A review by j3mm4
Goth Girl, Queen of the Universe by Lindsay S. Zrull
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I'm going to be so, so honest right now: this book seemed like it might have been taking on too much before I started reading it. It covers everything from the foster system to US immigration to parental death and abandonment to mental illness to LGBT identity to cosplay to goth subculture, and even thought the blurb only mentions some of those topics, it seemed like a really delicate balance would need to be struck, and I've seen a lot of authors publish books with fascinating, specific concepts that fall apart in execution. Lindsay S. Zrull stuck the fucking landing.
Not only is this novel technically stellar - protagonist Jess has a strong voice and feels like a real person, like a real Goth teen who loves fashion and her own fat body and has emotional armor so fabulously thick it's suffocating her and perfectly legitimate reasons for keeping that armor around; the supporting characters, their own issues, and their relationships with Jess and with each other all ring just as truthfully and are constructed with just as much care; the pacing is fast and fierce without sacrificing immersion or verisimilitude; the foreshadowing is a constant subtle presence; and the setup and payoff work so well you might as well be watching a Rube Goldberg machine win a world record - but it's also a really compelling and engaging read with so much love and effort evident on every page. Bothering to establish Jess' interest in the music that is the basis of the Goth subculture as well as the criticisms of the way people treat Goths just for expressing themselves, putting in the effort to show the nuance in Oscar's relationship with his dad and how machismo culture and physical separation created emotional distance between them but also how they overcome that together, giving Emily's sexuality a presence but not a tokenizing primacy and developing her beyond her lesbianism or her Chineseness without diminishing either identity's value to her, giving Gerrit a loving family and a thriving intellectual career without using exceptionalism to divorce him from the realities of being a teenage boy or make him emotionally unintelligent, allowing Barbara to be a wonderful foster mother precisely because she prioritizes the kids' needs above her own wants and never takes the easy road of demonizing biological parents even when Jess kind of wants her to while also still being a whole person with her own demons that she's put in the work to deal with, building strong friendships, emphasizing supportive peripheral adults without shying away from the reality that a lot of adults in the public school system suck, emphasizing that mental illnesses can be both horrifically disabling and managed so you can live a complete, fulfilling life - every element of this book was researched and balanced and presented with so much care and thought precisely because its audience is teenagers, rather than in spite of that.
When I was the prime demographic for YA books, I didn't read a ton of them, because either they felt incredibly pandering and condescending or because they felt completely unrelated to the reality of my experience. The ones I did read and love treated the teens on the page and off like real people with interiority and insight worthy of taking seriously, like we could handle the heavy stuff, like we could make mistakes and then fix them. That trust was a huge factor in which of the books that were aimed at me I took seriously; the rest of them, I read solely for the concept, usually science fiction or fantasy or dystopian, because I could focus on the worldbuilding and ignore the flatter, faker characters, and the prose was usually stylized for the genre to the point that it couldn't scan like baby talk. That this is a book not only set in the real world but grounded in the more complex aspects of it, without any elements of genre to mask its technical flaws, and feels earnest and loving and serious without losing the age-appropriety or the humor or the fairly true teenager-y voice makes me really happy for teens today, because this is the kind of YA they deserve.
Not only is this novel technically stellar - protagonist Jess has a strong voice and feels like a real person, like a real Goth teen who loves fashion and her own fat body and has emotional armor so fabulously thick it's suffocating her and perfectly legitimate reasons for keeping that armor around; the supporting characters, their own issues, and their relationships with Jess and with each other all ring just as truthfully and are constructed with just as much care; the pacing is fast and fierce without sacrificing immersion or verisimilitude; the foreshadowing is a constant subtle presence; and the setup and payoff work so well you might as well be watching a Rube Goldberg machine win a world record - but it's also a really compelling and engaging read with so much love and effort evident on every page. Bothering to establish Jess' interest in the music that is the basis of the Goth subculture as well as the criticisms of the way people treat Goths just for expressing themselves, putting in the effort to show the nuance in Oscar's relationship with his dad and how machismo culture and physical separation created emotional distance between them but also how they overcome that together, giving Emily's sexuality a presence but not a tokenizing primacy and developing her beyond her lesbianism or her Chineseness without diminishing either identity's value to her, giving Gerrit a loving family and a thriving intellectual career without using exceptionalism to divorce him from the realities of being a teenage boy or make him emotionally unintelligent, allowing Barbara to be a wonderful foster mother precisely because she prioritizes the kids' needs above her own wants and never takes the easy road of demonizing biological parents even when Jess kind of wants her to while also still being a whole person with her own demons that she's put in the work to deal with, building strong friendships, emphasizing supportive peripheral adults without shying away from the reality that a lot of adults in the public school system suck, emphasizing that mental illnesses can be both horrifically disabling and managed so you can live a complete, fulfilling life - every element of this book was researched and balanced and presented with so much care and thought precisely because its audience is teenagers, rather than in spite of that.
When I was the prime demographic for YA books, I didn't read a ton of them, because either they felt incredibly pandering and condescending or because they felt completely unrelated to the reality of my experience. The ones I did read and love treated the teens on the page and off like real people with interiority and insight worthy of taking seriously, like we could handle the heavy stuff, like we could make mistakes and then fix them. That trust was a huge factor in which of the books that were aimed at me I took seriously; the rest of them, I read solely for the concept, usually science fiction or fantasy or dystopian, because I could focus on the worldbuilding and ignore the flatter, faker characters, and the prose was usually stylized for the genre to the point that it couldn't scan like baby talk. That this is a book not only set in the real world but grounded in the more complex aspects of it, without any elements of genre to mask its technical flaws, and feels earnest and loving and serious without losing the age-appropriety or the humor or the fairly true teenager-y voice makes me really happy for teens today, because this is the kind of YA they deserve.