When I write a review for a book, I always try to find something nice or good to say about that book, even if I didn't like it. But I really have nothing good or nice to say about We All Fall Down. When I saw the cover and read the synapsis this sounded like something I would really enjoy. I was very much wrong.
This book was very confusing and I was entirely lost. Almost nothing made sense to me and I found myself going back to see if I had missed something the first time. The writing at times also talks directly to the reader and I really hate when books do that. It is always so cheesy and honestly super annoying. Literally nothing makes sense.
I was also excited for all the queer rep in this book, but all the characters just fell flat. There were non-binary and trans characters and while I understand that people don't immediately know what they identify as, this book doesn't give any sort of explanation of what is going on with what character. Plus, this book changes perspectives quite a lot which gets really confusing really fast. We are looking at the pronouns constantly change and there is one character that flips between he and she with no warning even when talking in their own perspective. One paragraph uses all he/him pronouns and then the paragraph right underneath switches to she/her. Plus, none of their genders are actually clarified until the end, so I felt like I was misgendering all the characters throughout the book.
There was also a lot of race related issues I felt were handled in a very unsensitized way without actually delving deep enough into those topics. They were just placed at a surface level and were never fully explained or showed a true relevance to the plot, even though there wasn't really a plot that I could find. A lot of other reviews touch on this better then I ever could, so I will leave it to them.
This book is shown as YA but I really think this is more NA than anything. Overall, this book was really unenjoyable, confusing, and uncomfortable to read.
This book was very confusing and I was entirely lost. Almost nothing made sense to me and I found myself going back to see if I had missed something the first time. The writing at times also talks directly to the reader and I really hate when books do that. It is always so cheesy and honestly super annoying. Literally nothing makes sense.
I was also excited for all the queer rep in this book, but all the characters just fell flat. There were non-binary and trans characters and while I understand that people don't immediately know what they identify as, this book doesn't give any sort of explanation of what is going on with what character. Plus, this book changes perspectives quite a lot which gets really confusing really fast. We are looking at the pronouns constantly change and there is one character that flips between he and she with no warning even when talking in their own perspective. One paragraph uses all he/him pronouns and then the paragraph right underneath switches to she/her. Plus, none of their genders are actually clarified until the end, so I felt like I was misgendering all the characters throughout the book.
There was also a lot of race related issues I felt were handled in a very unsensitized way without actually delving deep enough into those topics. They were just placed at a surface level and were never fully explained or showed a true relevance to the plot, even though there wasn't really a plot that I could find. A lot of other reviews touch on this better then I ever could, so I will leave it to them.
This book is shown as YA but I really think this is more NA than anything. Overall, this book was really unenjoyable, confusing, and uncomfortable to read.