lokasreads's reviews
40 reviews

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-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

4.75

Very hard to put down. The abrupt changes in point of view, without extra paragraph breaks or other means of delineation, were a bit disorienting at times, but this could have been a formatting issue with the specific eBook edition. I was expecting part of the ending and excited to see how it happened, but the "how" happened off-screen, which was a little disappointing. Small gripes for an otherwise stunning book.

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

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challenging emotional reflective tense medium-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

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

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challenging dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

As someone in my late twenties reading this in 2025, I am not the audience for this YA book from 2009, but I cannot wrap my head around its popularity. I was told going into this that it took a pro-choice perspective, but that is not reflected in the "both sides"ism that permeates the pages, starting from the very (absurd) premise that a pro-choice "army" would want to "retroactively abort" teenagers.

They say to write what you know, and this book is a good example of what can go wrong when you don't. The author did a disservice to the topic writing this without personal experience or, apparently, without even real discussions with the people who are actually affected. The absolute absurdity of comparing a pro-lifer murdering an abortion doctor to a pro-choicer 'getting pregnant just to sell the fetal tissue' - the insult of having the one female character not only be the one forced to take care of an infant, but to be the only one attached to the baby after seemingly hating it - the list goes on and on.

There is casual racism that definitely doesn't hold up to modern standards, but would feel out of place even reading in 2009. Black people are now called "umber" and white people are "sienna", creating the linguistic abomination of "lily-sienna", but Asian people are still Asian. Well, the one named Asian character in the book, who is a perfect and painful example of the Rebellious Asian Woman with Dyed Hair trope. Of the two named black characters, one is distrusted initially because of his skin tone and later said to be putting on a fake blaccent. The other only exists for the line "Even though Tina is umber, Risa has to admit it's true [that they could be twins].", which was supposed to be about both characters growing up in state homes, not their physical appearances. Later, when Risa sees Tina and a few other girls in a more positive light, she notices their negative features less; one girl is less fat, one is less ugly, and Tina is less tall. Feels slightly out of place in comparison, unless you think of Tina as fitting the scary, aggressive, Angry Black Woman trope - then it might make sense that Risa seeing her in a more positive light means thinking she's not as tall.

On a technical note, the writing feels childish, even for its genre. Some YA books stand the test of time and growing up and can be reread over and over again, but this is not one of them. The pacing, especially in the last half of the book, is ridiculously fast and leaves the events feeling even more incomprehensible, and it was difficult to be attached to any of the side characters. The "poetic" scene other reviewers describe towards the end of the book just felt like gore porn to me. Several quotes, even if they weren't absurd, insulting, or racist, were so poorly written they made me consider DNFing. I'm not sure if I should have, and I'm not sure I'll ever know.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced