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A review by popthebutterfly
Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump
5.0
Disclaimer: I received this ebook from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.
Book: Everywhere You Don’t Belong
Author: Gabriel Bump
Book Series: Standalone
Rating: 5/5
Diversity: Black American main characters and focused stories
Recommended For...: contemporary lovers, ya readers, cultural reads
Publication Date: February 4, 2020
Genre: YA Contemporary
Recommended Age: 16+ (slight violence, injustice, trauma, childhood violence, racism, slight romance)
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Pages: 264
Synopsis: In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
Review: I really liked this book! I thought the book did well to make a story and make it so engaging that I lost myself in the book. The character development is amazing, the world building was amazing and the writing was masterful! The book does well to show the trials and tribulations that most Black Americans face today, including injustice and generational pain through racism. The book also opens in such a lyrical and beautiful fashion. The book, for the second half of it, then centers on a person who is experiencing another sort of trauma. The book is beautiful from start to finish and you will cry.
The only thing that I didn’t really like about the book was that sometimes the pacing was a bit slow.
Verdict: Highly recommend!
Book: Everywhere You Don’t Belong
Author: Gabriel Bump
Book Series: Standalone
Rating: 5/5
Diversity: Black American main characters and focused stories
Recommended For...: contemporary lovers, ya readers, cultural reads
Publication Date: February 4, 2020
Genre: YA Contemporary
Recommended Age: 16+ (slight violence, injustice, trauma, childhood violence, racism, slight romance)
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Pages: 264
Synopsis: In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
Review: I really liked this book! I thought the book did well to make a story and make it so engaging that I lost myself in the book. The character development is amazing, the world building was amazing and the writing was masterful! The book does well to show the trials and tribulations that most Black Americans face today, including injustice and generational pain through racism. The book also opens in such a lyrical and beautiful fashion. The book, for the second half of it, then centers on a person who is experiencing another sort of trauma. The book is beautiful from start to finish and you will cry.
The only thing that I didn’t really like about the book was that sometimes the pacing was a bit slow.
Verdict: Highly recommend!