Ivy Aberdeen is a girl who draws pictures of girls holding hands, one day when she loses her notebook her secret is at risk. Ivy's drawings start showing up in her locker with notes telling her to open up about her feelings.
2/5 stars Honestly, just wow, this was not good. I had to read this for school, we were picking from a few different books and I picked it because I was happy to see that there was a focus on lgbtq+ in a middle-grade book. The main characters were 12 but they acted 8 years old and everything was just so cringy. We were supposed to feel bad for Ivy because her home got destroyed in a tornado and while dealing with that she lost a notebook that was holding a secret she did not want to spread. However, I just couldn't deal with that girl. Her internal moping gave me a headache and instead of feeling sad for her, I felt annoyed at her. For example, in Ivy's family, they have a tradition of calling, talking to someone, giving a gift, etc. on the second they were born each year. Ivy's parents forgot, and this is what happened: “Ivy clung to her cell phone as time moved closer and close to 10:33...Then it hit 10:33. Then it Passed...Ivy couldn't hear anything over the sound of her lungs trying to get enough air while she turned off her phone.” Do you see what I mean? moving on. As I said earlier, everything was very cringy and Ivy didn’t even have the mental capacity to think the word crush. In the real world, most people have the mental capacity to think the word crush by second grade. It doesn’t mean you have to have a crush in second grade, but you can still think the word!!! In this book crush was: a word that started with c and rhymed with brush. Oh, I cringed so hard. This whole thing where Ivy was being pressured to come out was downright sickening. The story never made it clear to readers that it is wrong to pressure someone to come out( it did talk about how coming out was hard, but I still feel that the message wasn't conveyed enough), because of this younger readers might get the wrong idea. Just another example of bad books giving the wrong message. *sighs* Everybody should support lgbtq+, but you should never pressure someone to come out when they don't want to, Ivy was even blackmailed !!! wtf. "You can have your notebook back when you talk to someone about it." was what the anonymous note giver said. They tried to encourage Ivy by being nice and saying "If it helps I think your drawings are pretty " Also, there weren’t many Identities discussed aside from lesbian and bisexual, I would have liked to see more identities discussed. lgbtq+ representation belongs in books for all ages including middle grade, but here it was not done well.
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Cinder is a 16-year-old cyborg and a mechanic. She lives in New Beijing and the Lunar people watch as the earth's society collapses. A deadly plague is killing people faster than ever and when Cinder meets Prince Kai she suddenly finds herself amid romance, her mysterious past, and much more.
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