eveningcrickets 's review for:

Pioneer Summer by Katerina Silvanova, Elena Malisova

4.0

challenging dark emotional funny inspiring sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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The first 200 or so pages are a bit painful to get though. The dialogue is clunky and the characters feel very 2 dimensional and highly emotional/reactive about every little thing, which gets old quickly.

One of my favorite, heavy heavy handed foreshadowing was making a character a literal chekov’s gun lolollll

However!!! Pls keep reading!! This magical thing happens in the text where Yurka literally grows up via the prose. It’s like reading/watching childhood end. This book was full of some of the most achingly beautiful passages (followed by not gr8 dialogue lol). And i am so grateful/happy with the ending. I’m glad i kept reading!!! I also really appreciated that this book is a real depiction of people coming into their queerness in a difficult time. There are “problematic” passages about activism and drag, but those make sense to who the characters are and I really appreciate that because it makes this story feel very real.