If you’re looking for fairytale vibes, as it’s marketed, this is definitely not the book for you. I didn’t enjoy it as much as most people seemed to and I definitely did not get the fairytale vibes I was looking for. I guess one could argue it was a dark fairytale but it still didn’t hit that mark for me. It was decent, and I enjoyed the rep, but solidly okay, not great. **Please don’t rely on my content warnings!! I read this all in one night two months ago and didn’t write the review until now; I’m confident I missed a few.**
Technically I was supposed to read all of this for class last semester but I ran out of time to do the readings for the last few classes and I simply do not care enough to go back and finish it. I’ll be taking lots of law classes. I’m not missing anything I won’t hear a hundred more times.
Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual assault, Racism, Religious bigotry, Death, and Rape
Minor: Abortion
If you couldn’t tell..this is a law textbook. It’s nothing graphic or major plot points; there are legal cases revolving around these issues, since legal cases address legal injustices. I don’t even know why I’m bothering adding CWs. Just for fun I guess 😂
This is definitely a “temporarily set aside,” not a “I’m not going to read this.” I just didn’t have the time/energy/concentration to finish it when I first started and I’ve read a small enough amount that I think it would be easier and more logical to just start over whenever I get to it again.
read for school, didn’t like nearly enough to read it all. I actually read a lot more than this but it wasn’t in order so it’s not really possible to track.
Graphic: Abortion, Misogyny, Sexism, Racism, Classism, Eating disorder, Hate crime, and Fatphobia
Minor: Ableism
I put most content warnings under “graphic” but I’m not sure how to categorize them. It’s not graphic in the sense of detailed descriptions of specific occurrences of each topic necessarily, but there are extensive discussions about these topics as a whole. Also, the chapters are fairly independent so not all CWs appear in all or even many chapters.
This is another one I read part of for school and didn’t enjoy enough to finish. I know a lot of people loved this one and I’ve seen a lot of people say it’s “groundbreaking” or that it adds something new to the trans literary canon and frankly I disagree with that. I feel like this is a very common queer narrative - a trans person who has always known they were “different” but didn’t know that meant queer, and they have an accepting family and friends and ample access to queer resources. This is in no way a critique on Maia Kobabe’s life. Eir life is eir life; there’s no arguing with eir lived experiences. Nor is it a critique of eir choice to write this book, especially knowing why e did. I’m just saying that as a narrative, I don’t think it adds much and it’s not a story I am personally interested in reading.
Read this for class in college, and we were only require to read this section. I frankly didn’t “get it” or gain anything from it that made it worth it to finish it later on.