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As you know from THUG; Maverick is involved with a gang at this point in his life. It's partially for his own protection (his father was a member and having a gang at your back is really helpful safety wise) but he switches back and forth between selling drugs for financial reasons (and as you should know from the THUG, he has two infants he needs to care for) and trying to be what he feels is a good person.

I should say, this book does not end with Maverick going to prison for the bogus gun charge. That's alluded to. it's gonna happen.

This book is ultimately hopeful, and I would recommend it alongside Dear Martin and Dear Justyce. And of course, read THUG if you haven't already.

I want to say that up-front. It IS a challenging read, for emotional and thought-provoking reasons. I highly recommend it IF you are in a place where you can read about the above mentioned content in a safe-manner.

The concept of the book is you are reading various first chapter drafts of this memoir, sometimes a fictional piece based off the author, Sarah's family. When I say "Author" assume I mean "Sarah" and not Rabih Alameddine, that will make this much easier.

Technically I didn't read all of it, because the author knows French, so some of the first drafts are in French. I Tried, I did! But my French is not up to the task.

Basically you can assemble a story by putting together these various first chapter drafts.

But like I said, it will not hold your hand.

You have to put together for example, that the author doesn't want to come back to Lebanon from the States because of a gang-rape, not just the war everyone endured.

I feel a little guilty about my rating, because I don't know what the French parts said, but I stand by the rest of the book.

Was I just obtuse for not figuring out the "Balls" thing?

Anyway, this is a solid but long book, I believe it's longer than Bitterblue. You should probably read it slower than I did, because there are some parts I didn't grasp the best because I was rushing.

This is markedly different than the previous 3. More sexual content, a bit more sexually explicit. It is not You-Know-Who-Adjacent this time.

There's several point of view characters, including Giddon (which made me excited. I like Giddon), Bitterblue, Lovisa, and others. Honestly if it wasn't for the Lovisa parts I'm not sure you could call this book YA. I'm not entirely sure you can anyway, since the only parts that have a young voice take up maybe a fourth or fifth of the book.

It's a GREAT read, but if you are expecting something along the lines of the previous books, don't.

I'll be clear, I really don't like when there's a significant age-gap in couples, but that's usually more "oh they got together when she was 17" or something. Giddon and Bitterblue sort of works in my opinion because they start as best-friends in Bitterblue, and don't really grow into anything until Bitterblue is 20-something. It did not make me as uncomfortable as I thought it would when I first detected hints of it in this book. But you know, your mileage may vary.

I highly recommend this book if you yourself are non-binary, or want to better understand how it works.

It does contain misgendering, and a TERF lesbian aunt.

I personally didn't care for how the book ended, but it's not like it was bad or anything. It just felt sudden and "oh that's it".

It's a slow build of a book (in my opinion slower than Bitterblue even) that almost became a chore to read (Because of personal issues, I want to be very clear, the book is fine!) but I definitely appreciate it more than I originally did.

This is a prequel to Graceling, set a while earlier in a different land. Don't worry, as you learn from the first page, your favorite antagonist is in it.

But yeah, while reading I kept thinking about "if I could control minds would I just be destined to be a (figurative) monster?" And the book asks that question with your protagonist, a teenage girl that has the ability to control people's minds and is afraid of that power.

It's a really juicy book to just think about.

This is my favorite of Silvera's books, and it's not really a surprise. If you know the premise of this book, it fits well into my life (though I don't have anterograde amnesia, I have a different memory problem).

I think I'm going to recommend this book for my dad who keeps trying to understand my memory problems (because I haven't found any fiction about ECT memory loss). Obviously, anterograde is different, but the loss of time, missing out on segments of my life, that's accurate.

...I don't know how I feel about the new ending. It's not like it's wrong, it's just that unless pills magically start working for me, I don't get an ending where all I lost was a year. Not to say that's a small sacrifice, but I've been on ECTs so long I don't remember when I started (though it would be very un-YA to have Aaron be like, 28 when he gets cured) Maybe I'm just jealous? I wouldn't go as far as to say Aaron is magically cured and doesn't have sacrifices made from becoming disabled, but it feels weird to have like 5 or more chapters devoted to "I've got anterograde amnesia, can't be left alone anymore, can't work anymore," and then "ONE YEAR LATER: it's fixed!"

I feel like there's a lot to say about this book, maybe I'll sort out my feelings soon.

Your premise is that the protagonist's best friend doesn't show up to school after the summer break they spent apart.

You spend the rest of the story finding out exactly what happened and how so many, so MANY people fucked up.

It's obviously a downer of a book. But it's good, I recommend it.

Don't get me wrong, I love this book. But it is a long book, and it is about a kingdom recovering from abuse, and the abuse still perpetuated. It's painful and if you can't see unplanned allusions to post-45 written by someone over 5 years ago, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not saying read it when your day is going perfectly, but do not read it right now if you're depressed.

Anyway, still got Fire to read, and eventually Winterkeep.