You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

thedambookshelf's Reviews (336)

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
emotional fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

2.5 stars 

To start off I want to thank NetGalley and Bloomsbury for providing me with an e-arc for As Far As You'll Take Me in exchange for an honest review. I started reading this before the publishing date and honestly considered DNFing it more than a handful of times, but I kept pushing through and finally finished it. I do appreciate the number of own voice authors creating real-world queer stories but this wasn't one I'd personally recommend nor can I say will sit with me. 

I had a lot of issues with the storytelling, this writing style just isn't for me. I've grown out of the YA contemporary phase but I do try to get my hands on lgbtq+ reads no matter the genre. I felt that the maturity level of this story could have been higher, Marty is a graduate of high school trying to find his place in the world as an adult. In my opinion, that should have led this story to have a more mature tone but it didn't. I know it was targeted for Young Adults but it just seemed so off. 

Marty was a very irritating main character, and this book tried to tackle a lot of different issues including mental health, eating disorders, forced outing, and homophobia. As much as I love books that raise awareness of such things this book didn't do that for me, not on a positive note. I found a lot of the decisions from Marty to be very toxic and he was just very immature as I stated above. 

It's disappointing because I did have high expectations for this book and I was let down. There were some good aspects just not enough to say this was an okay read for me.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Lore

Alexandra Bracken

DID NOT FINISH

I don’t rate books I dnf but I just couldn't