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pucksandpaperbacks's reviews
652 reviews
Lucy, Uncensored by Mel Hammond
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
TW: Outing, Transphobia, Deadnaming (mentioned and alluded to but the name is not on-page); unsupportive parent but comes around in the end, mention and detail of smoking weed, underage drinking, alcohol; a graphic scene where she is outed & the love interest is transphobic and shouts transphobic language at her (this is challenged and called out by other characters); cancer
I was sent a #gifted review copy from the publisher. All thoughts are my own.
Lucy, Uncensored is a YA contemporary coming-of-age novel following a teenage trans girl, Lucy in her senior year of high school. She loves theater (specifically directing) and is attached to the hip with her best friend, Callie. When a college trip to their dream school, Central isn't what they imagined, the girls become uncertain of their college plans that have been set in stone for most of their life. When Lucy finds a women's college, Botetourt has an excellent theater program and would be a fresh start for her to get out of her small town in Central Pennsylvania, the girls embark on a road trip. During their visit at Botetourt, they fall in love with it for the theater program and learn it's filled with LGBTQ+ and trans students. But the school still has a long way to go with their inclusion of trans and non-binary students. Plus, they've never had a trans girl enroll before. Protests begin while the girls are on campus, making Lucy hesitant if Botetourt is the right fit for her.
Overall, I enjoyed the joy Lucy experiences while she's being hit with a lot of difficult decisions and learning how hard it is to be trans and be out. For Lucy, she wants to be stealth, but learns how risky and difficult it can be. This book is joyous and will make you smile but it's not a light book as there are many instances of transphobia that Lucy faces from her peers, her father, and a boy at Botetourt. There's also a storyline where the Shakespearean play she and Callie rewrote to be more LGBTQ+ and trans focused + directed gets shut down by the school board.
*Spoiler, but please read if you're sensitive to reading transphobia.
There's a scene where she is messaging on Instagram with a boy, Ian who's mother works in the theater department at the women's college. However, she doesn't disclose that she is a teenager in high school whereas Ian is going into his senior year of college. Wanting to be stealth, she lies and tells Ian she's planning to transfer from Central (the college nearest to her) and attend Botetourt. While in person, she and Ian are intimate in make-out sessions. Lucy is outed when she has to pick up her wallet that she lost from the campus Lost & Found, but since her license and I.D. are not up to date with her current name and gender marker, she's forced to say her deadname out loud. Ian reacts very erratic and aggressive, spewing transphobic remarks toward Lucy. The characters around them do challenge this and call out Ian and the security guard's behavior. However, this scene made me wildly uncomfortable as Lucy doesn't learn much from this situation. It makes me wonder why the authors chose to add this into the story. I acknowledge this does happen to trans folks and trans woman, especially but there's really no learning lesson from this. At the end of the book, Lucy confides in a trans man, Ayden who she meets at Botetourt who asks her about being stealth and provides wonderful advice. I just wish she had more scenes where trans folks are having these important conversations with her. I do still find it uncomfortable that she was hooking up with an older dude. I would've preferred Ian's outburst to be about her age, not her gender identity.
That's my only big gripe with this book. But besides that, I do think this is a good and important book for trans teens to read. I liked Lucy and Callie's bond & friendship. The end make me smile as well!
I was sent a #gifted review copy from the publisher. All thoughts are my own.
Lucy, Uncensored is a YA contemporary coming-of-age novel following a teenage trans girl, Lucy in her senior year of high school. She loves theater (specifically directing) and is attached to the hip with her best friend, Callie. When a college trip to their dream school, Central isn't what they imagined, the girls become uncertain of their college plans that have been set in stone for most of their life. When Lucy finds a women's college, Botetourt has an excellent theater program and would be a fresh start for her to get out of her small town in Central Pennsylvania, the girls embark on a road trip. During their visit at Botetourt, they fall in love with it for the theater program and learn it's filled with LGBTQ+ and trans students. But the school still has a long way to go with their inclusion of trans and non-binary students. Plus, they've never had a trans girl enroll before. Protests begin while the girls are on campus, making Lucy hesitant if Botetourt is the right fit for her.
Overall, I enjoyed the joy Lucy experiences while she's being hit with a lot of difficult decisions and learning how hard it is to be trans and be out. For Lucy, she wants to be stealth, but learns how risky and difficult it can be. This book is joyous and will make you smile but it's not a light book as there are many instances of transphobia that Lucy faces from her peers, her father, and a boy at Botetourt. There's also a storyline where the Shakespearean play she and Callie rewrote to be more LGBTQ+ and trans focused + directed gets shut down by the school board.
*Spoiler, but please read if you're sensitive to reading transphobia.
That's my only big gripe with this book. But besides that, I do think this is a good and important book for trans teens to read. I liked Lucy and Callie's bond & friendship. The end make me smile as well!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia and Outing
Moderate: Cancer and Deadnaming
Minor: Drug use and Alcohol
Outing, Transphobia, Deadnaming (mentioned and alluded to but the name is not on-page); unsupportive parent but comes around in the end, mention and detail of smoking weed, underage drinking, alcohol; a graphic scene where she is outed & the love interest is transphobic and shouts transphobic language at her (this is challenged and called out by other characters); cancer
Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins
CW: SA, adoption, gender dysphoria, racism, racial slurs, d-slur, transphobia, religious bigotry
The Secret Sunshine Project by Benjamin Dean
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief and Death of parent
Minor: Homophobia
Rana Joon and the One and Only Now by Shideh Etaat
CW: grief, cheating, car accident (graphic, on-page, in detail), death, homophobia, Islamophobia, underage drinking, alcohol, drug use - characters smoke weed (on-page), fatphobia and fatphobic comments from Rana's mother; absent father, Tupac's death mentioned (on-page); mention of antidepressants in a negative connotation as a character doesn't talk them and it leads to a bad situation; panic attack on page.
What a hidden gem!!! Set in 1996, Rana Joon is a lesbian Iranian-American teenage girl living in SoCal. She loves Tupac and writing poetry. When her best friend Louie unexpectedly passes away in a car accident, she starts her grief journey where she learns there were many things she didn't know about Louie. To honor him, she decides to enter a rap battle he would've participated in. She learns to enjoy writing her own poems and gains confidence as she is petrified of public speaking. This is a messy, fierce girl who finds herself learning about family secret's and stepping up to her strict father who lives in Iran while defying gender norms.
This book is MESSY but so is grief! I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it, but please be advised of the content warnings because this is not a light book by any means.
One critique I have is I didn't like the scene of her love interest telling her to "live her truth" and come out to her family while knowing it might not have been safe for her to do so. The coming out scene is not horrible, but her mother does gets upset and shuts her out for about a week. Luckily, she eventually comes around.
What a hidden gem!!! Set in 1996, Rana Joon is a lesbian Iranian-American teenage girl living in SoCal. She loves Tupac and writing poetry. When her best friend Louie unexpectedly passes away in a car accident, she starts her grief journey where she learns there were many things she didn't know about Louie. To honor him, she decides to enter a rap battle he would've participated in. She learns to enjoy writing her own poems and gains confidence as she is petrified of public speaking. This is a messy, fierce girl who finds herself learning about family secret's and stepping up to her strict father who lives in Iran while defying gender norms.
This book is MESSY but so is grief! I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it, but please be advised of the content warnings because this is not a light book by any means.
One critique I have is I didn't like the scene of her love interest telling her to "live her truth" and come out to her family while knowing it might not have been safe for her to do so. The coming out scene is not horrible, but her mother does gets upset and shuts her out for about a week. Luckily, she eventually comes around.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Grief, and Car accident
Moderate: Death, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Islamophobia, and Alcohol
Minor: Mental illness
CW: grief, cheating, car accident (graphic, on-page, in detail), death, homophobia, Islamophobia, underage drinking, alcohol, drug use - characters smoke weed (on-page), fatphobia and fatphobic comments from Rana's mother; absent father, Tupac's death mentioned (on-page); mention of antidepressants in a negative connotation as a character doesn't talk them and it leads to a bad situation; panic attack (on-page)
The Comic Book Story of Video Games: The Incredible History of the Electronic Gaming Revolution by Jonathan Hennessey, Jack McGowan
Did not finish book. Stopped at 3%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 3%.
Boring, not my thing!
Sugar, Spice and Christmas Nice by Anne Hagan
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
This was fine. Personally, I think it was too rushed. I liked the conflict added to save the bakery and Layla's brother changing his holiday plans. However, this is set in an Italian bakery in Philadelphia and as a fellow Italian-American from Philly, this didn't feel much like an Italian bakery. They sold cakes, cupcakes and cookies. But there was more of an emphasis and scenes where they're decorating cakes and cupcakes. I wish there had been more detail to incorporate Italian pastries, atleast cannolis were briefly mentioned. I did enjoy Destiny's storyline being a young, budding baker and her joy was infectious. I really liked her as a character!
The romance was sooo rushed! Paige and Layla dated for over four years but things got complicated when they had to be long-distance during their college years. The book states "Trust had been broken, words said that couldn't be taken back" and that's pretty much everything we know about the break-up.
There's also a scene where Layla receives a box with Paige's old letters and memories from their relationship that is so unnecessary becausePaige says it wasn't her and must've been her mom who sent it. Then, Paige confesses she wants to get back together and they just get back together!?!?! I wish the plot point about the breakup had been more fleshed out because I was not rooting for this couple to get back together knowing they had barely addressed the cause of their breakup. Thus, the end really bothered me because Layla decides she's back to Baltimore with Paige for grad school to continue her pursuit of becoming a writer . Last, Paige proposes to Layla at the very end. This all happened in the same year and few days. I'd prefer to have had some flashbacks where we see these scenes more spaced out because the characters made a lot of big decisions very quickly and it irked me.
The romance was sooo rushed! Paige and Layla dated for over four years but things got complicated when they had to be long-distance during their college years. The book states "Trust had been broken, words said that couldn't be taken back" and that's pretty much everything we know about the break-up.
There's also a scene where Layla receives a box with Paige's old letters and memories from their relationship that is so unnecessary because
Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns
CW: death of a parent, car accident (on-page, detailed), racism, deportation, grief, drug use.
The Cookie Crumbles by Alechia Dow, Tracy Badua
CW: grief, loss of a parent to cancer, mention of chemotherapy; character experiences a migrane; mention of character in a coma; tampering with medicine
Brooms by Jasmine Walls
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
CW: racism, misogyny, sexism, colonization, scene where a gun is present and fired, police, and graphic mention of residential schools.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gun violence, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, and Colonisation