Orpheus Girl

by Brynne Rebele-Henry

In her debut novel, award–winning poet Brynne Rebele-Henry re-imagines the epic of Orpheus as a love story between two teen girls in rural Texas.

Abandoned by a single mother she never knew, 16-year-old Raya—obsessed with ancient myths—lives with her grandmother in a small conservative Texas town. For years Raya has hidden her feelings for her best friend and true love, Sarah. When the two are caught in an intimate moment, they are sent to Friendly Saviors: a re-education camp meant to “fix” them and make them heterosexual. Upon arrival, Raya vows to assume the role of Orpheus, to return to the world of the living with her love—and after she, Sarah, and the other teen residents are subjected to abusive and brutal “treatments” by the staff, Raya only becomes more determined to escape.

In a haunting voice reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, with the contemporary lyricism of David Levithan, Orpheus Girl is a mythic story of dysfunctional families, first love, heartbreak—and the fierce adolescent resilience that has the power to triumph over darkness and ignorance.

CW: There are scenes in this book that depict self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, and violence against LGBTQ characters.

Genres: LGBT, Young Adult, Contemporary, Queer, Lesbian, Romance, Retellings

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2019

About the author

Brynne Rebele-Henry was born in 1999. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Rookie, and Blackbird, among other places. Her writing has won numerous awards, including the 2015 Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has two books of poetry: Fleshgraphs and Autobiography of a Wound, which won the AWP Donald Hall Poetry Prize and is a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Orpheus Girl is her first novel.

Reviews

[Kai Spellmeier]

doesn't this cover give you all the We Are Okay feels?? AND it's an f/f romance too.

[Jasmine from How Useful It Is · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great read! Raya is such a down to earth girl and it's so easy to follow her view. I feel sad for her how she craves to have her mom's love and attention but doesn't receive. Her feelings sound realistic and can be relatable to many readers because of where she lives and the constant fears she has living in a small town of strict church goers. I like her friendship with Sarah. Sarah seems like a great person as well. I like other supporting characters like Leon and Clio. I enjoy the humor in this book.

This book is told in the first person point of view following Raya, 16 who is raised by her grandma because her teen mom abandoned her when she was 2. Her mom is an actress on TV and plays the Aphrodite character so Raya learns about ancient myths to prepare herself that if one day her mom comes back for her, she'll have something to talk to her mom about. Raya misses her mom a lot. She lives in a small town and is constantly afraid that someone will find out that she actually likes girls instead of boys. When gay teens in this small town got found out, they disappeared. Raya worries a lot when it will happen to her and where will she disappear to. This book is divided into 6 parts.

Orpheus Girl is well written and a fast paced read! Church's involvement to cure homosexual is kind of funny and cruel. The people running the program talk down to them to make them feel less than a person while the activities such as doing strenuous exercises that they are put up to perform is just silly. Using the methods of torture such as electroshock to stop loving someone seems extreme. I am a bit disappointed with Raya's grandma. I realize she's a strict church goer but her own daughter got pregnant out of wedlock and she kept the baby instead of putting up for adoption or abortion so I would expect that she would give Raya a chance instead of sending her off. This book is LGBT in the old days where gays are unacceptable and cast out. I don't know much about Orpheus so I can't tell the retelling part. The story is still a good read despite some trigger warnings and I do recommend everyone to read this book!

Pro: fast paced, page turner, LGBT, friendship, family, humor, easy to read, diversity,

Con: trigger warnings of how gays are unacceptable back in the day and torture is used as a method to cure

I rate it 4.5 stars!

***Disclaimer: Many thanks to Soho Press for the opportunity to read and review. Please be assured that my opinions are honest.

xoxo,
Jasmine at www.howusefulitis.wordpress.com for more details

[tappkalina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I've lost another part of me.

This is what The Miseducation of Cameron Post wishes it was. I'm not here to shit on serious topics, but that book was a joke. Here's my review if you want to know why I hate it so much.

But back to Orpheus Girl. Which is not even a horror or a thriller, but gave me nightmares. The last and probably only book that ever did that was some CSI: Miami when I was 16 and on a vacation and woke up in the middle of the night terrified and couldn't sleep till morning.

Now I'm 23. And this story crawled under my skin apparently. In my dream a cult captured and trained us to "save the world", but blackmailed us in order to make us stay. And when I finally woke up they were in the middle of amputating our legs in a not steril place, because ??

Also, even if I cry on a book, I'm usually silent. But in this case I said out loud "no, no, no" more than I could count. It was horrible. Devastating. A torture.
I consider these characters war survivors. And we don't even know how much not just emotional but physical harm their body suffered. How it will affect their lives. How many years it shortened their lives.

The fact we need books like this in 2021 is mindblowing. Like... I'm just dreaming, right?

[Cece (ProblemsOfaBookNerd) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t immediately want to write a review for this one because I can’t stand writing 3 star reviews but here we go! Let’s attempt this!

Things I liked:
-Mythological elements, specifically the Orpheus retelling element and how present it was in the story
-The characters
-The writing, it was beautiful and it was easy to get through
-The length. For the content, I’m glad this wasn’t longer because I don’t think I could have handled it.

Things I didn’t like:
-Char as a “villain” or whatever she was currently standing in for
-Violence against a trans person to motivate other queer characters
-Lack of a conclusion with a particular storyline with the main character’s mother
-No mention of types of queerness beyond gay and trans. No bi, pan, ace or otherwise queer characters, which makes it seem like lesbian, gay, and transgender are the only options.

I’m glad this book had trigger warnings at the beginning in multiple places but I would like to expand on those so no queer people go into this without warning. Full tw list: homophobia, homophobic slurs, transphobia, misgendering, dead naming, conversion “therapy”, vivid description of electroshock and other torture methods that conversion camps use, suicide, internalized homophobia, outing.

I wish I had more to say about this but I really don’t. This is a book designed to make people, especially queer people, cry and it just didn’t make me cry because I can always feel that manipulative writing and it just keeps me at a distance. I think there is some value here when it comes to depicting conversion therapy as torture, in refusing to look at it as anything but torture. I think sometimes narratives refuse to really tackle that head on and so in some ways this is a valuable story.

However, I don’t know who I could in good conscience recommend this to. The book was dedicated to queer teens, but I would never put this story in the hands of queer teens. It’s too horrifying, too scarring, especially for queer teens living in deeply homophobic situations. But I also feel like adults who are confident in their queerness have read conversion therapy narratives before and would have to be, like me, in a very strong frame of mind to read about the torture being done to queer teens. So, while I think there’s so much value in writing about the truth of the torture in these camps, the intended audience for this confuses me.

Like I said, I hate writing 3 star reviews because I go back and forth so often. I don’t know how to evenly describe the food and the bad so sometimes I doubt myself and the star rating I gave the book. Maybe, hopefully, my indecision and my middling feelings make sense. If this is a book you loved I would love to hear why, and if this is a book you can’t stand I would love to hear why as well. For now, these are my thoughts and I hope they make sense.

[Whitney Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Thanks to the publisher for an advanced review copy!

This cover and the fact that this book is f/f gave me major Nina Lacour vibes, so I’m sad I didn’t enjoy this as much as I wish I would’ve. I’ll be first to admit that I’m not hugely well versed on Greek mythology, so I had to Google the myth of Orpheus and go from there. The character guide in the back was also really helpful to see how the story correlated to the myth. But other than having a cool plot structure and a strong bond between the two main characters, this book left a lot to be desired.

For starters, it’s barely even 175 pages for an entire book about coming out, going to conversion therapy camp, falling in love, and more. Even though the size of this book was a huge inspiration in my motivation to read it, this book did itself a major disservice by rushing through a lot of the plot. Furthermore, a lot of the elements were really convenient and cookie cutter, and I never felt shocked or touched by what was happening because it all occurred so quickly. It almost feels like this is a book someone wrote for Nanowrimo where they rushed through everything just to get a complete story in 50,000 words, but it reads like a first draft where the author still has to go back in and add a lot of detail and plot description.

Other than that, there’s not a lot to be said. Again, I liked the characters and the conflict and the setting of small town Texas (side note: I think this book is set in the 90s? It very much had that vibe and I loved it). The writing did have some lovely lines toward the beginning, but once this book picked up speed, it just progressed very mechanically with no character development and several elements thrown in as shock value without a lot of substance. I’m sure this book will be meaningful to some people, but it lacked enough spark to make me connect to it and I thought it was somewhat unrealistically and conveniently resolved, as much as I was cheering the girls on.

[Liv Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

In some ways, Orpheus Girl is old school YA. At 176 pages, it doesn’t waste time beating around the bush. It tells you exactly what’s up: Raya’s grandmother, her church, and most of her small Texas town are homophobic. Her mother abandoned her, and that sucks. Conversion therapy is evil. Think Judy Blume’s Forever, which stares issues of teen sexuality right in the face, names them, and addresses them directly. Rebele-Henry’s writing is clear, even beautiful at the sentence level, and at first, Orpheus Girl is a refreshing read.

Unfortunately, unlike Forever, things quickly get muddled. There are two major problems here: underdeveloped characters and plot contrivance. It doesn’t help that the premise is reminiscent of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, a popular YA book about conversion therapy that recently spawned a Chloe Grace Moretz vehicle, while the cover art and parts of the plot call to mind Nina LaCour’s excellent We Are Okay. None of the characters in this book have consistent, coherent personalities. Raya loves Greek mythology, we’re told, but we never actually see her reading it, talking about it, thinking about it; she only ever brings it up for the sake of metaphor. And unlike with Cameron, who is a firecracker from the beginning of her story, it’s hard to understand why she decides to talk back to and rebel against authority at the conversion camp; doing so takes a fierceness that we just don’t see from her in the first part of the book. Like the protagonist of We Are Okay, she lives alone with a widowed grandparent, whom she both loves and struggles to love; however, while Marin’s grandfather is complex and tenderly drawn, Raya’s Grammy is cardboard. Similarly, Sarah, Raya’s girlfriend, has no defining personality traits. Most baffling of all is Char, who runs the camp’s “treatments” and immediately calls to mind Cameron Post’s Lydia (her coworker, Hyde, is very similar to Rick). She swings wildly between cruel torturer to tortured savior, depending on which is convenient for the story. A “cured” lesbian, she’s apparently been administering these horrific “treatments” to countless teens over several years, but she’s only just now, with Raya’s arrival (but completely uninfluenced by Raya herself), considering helping them escape. Honestly, Char’s random character changes are the only thing that move the plot forward past the first section of this book. Raya does nothing; Char is always the one who decides to either torture or save her and Sarah. This, combined with cringeworthy plot contrivances with no buildup or tension (car crash, anyone?), made me want to pull my hair out.

It’s not all bad. Orpheus Girl has some truly lovely writing, and it doesn’t shy away from the horrors of conversion therapy and early 2000′s homophobia. Its open ending, like Cameron Post’s, is much more satisfying than a neat, tied-up one would have been. And I don’t mean to imply that Rebele-Henry is intentionally ripping off either Emily Danforth or Nina LaCour. But this book just doesn’t live up to its promise as a modern retelling of Orpheus - beyond character names and Raya’s own insistence that she is “like Orpheus,” there is little to no resemblance to the myth - and it does beg comparison to other YA novels that are, at the end of the day, much better.

[Fadwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a DRC of this book from edelweiss in exchange of an honest review

CW: homophobia, conversion therapy, transphobia, deadnaming, car crash, electroshock therapy, violent homophobic hate speech, starving, suicide attempt, self-harm

If I have one book I regret reading this year, it’s this one. My story with it started when I heard it was an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling, so in me fashion without looking for more information, I requested it and was approved. Later on, I find out that it centers conversion therapy, and even with my hesitation, I thought that since I had the Arc, I might as well read it. Big mistake on my part. My reading experience was awful from start to finish and not because of the subject matter, because if it were done well, I would’ve liked this Orpheus Girl but alas.

Full review posted on my blog : Word Wonders

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Orpheus Girl is the story of Raya, a girl in love with her best friend Sarah, who is struggling to hide her sexual awakening in the Deep South. Raised by her grandmother, she must decide whether to succumb to peer pressure and live a life of lies or rescue her lover from hell - a conversion camp.

This is a loose Orpheus and Eurydice retelling, as Raya loves Greek mythology and compares a lot of her struggles to the Greek tragedies. Her mother, who she refers to as Aphrodite, abandoned her as a toddler and as a result she struggles with expressing and accepting love. Hiding who she really is results in a double life, and it's only through her time with Sarah that she begins to realise that what they share together is precious and should be cherished. Their relationship feels well developed, and is certainly the strongest aspect of the story.

I do think that the synopsis of this gives away too much of the story.
It's a short read, yet some of what is described in the blurb doesn't happen until over 100 pages in - meaning it looses its impact as I knew what was coming. Because of the short length I also found that a lot of the later plot is told in bits and pieces, without a lot of depth added to the secondary characters we meet. Large portions of the story are simply skipped over in favour of furthering the plot, when emotionally I could have benefitted from more insight.

I also found that I had to suspend my belief in the plot at times, as the logic doesn't really make sense. I highly doubt, for example, that they'd allow both girls to go to the same camp, let alone share a room together, given their history. . This plot point was just sort of glossed over. I will say that I enjoyed the ending. It's hopeful without being too twee. Optimistic without wrapping everything up neatly, while bringing in the concept of found families. The writing itself is although rather lovely.

In conclusion, decent read and hints of mythology that I loved, but the logic didn't hold up at times.

[anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

rep: lesbian mc & li, trans side character, gay side character

arc provided by the publisher.

this is all metaphor & no substance. poets writing novels don't always succeed and unfortunately this is one of those times. we glide through the pages full of pretty words & we're told a lot of things about the characters and the plot, but there is absolutely nothing underneath it. there is no way to connect to anyone in this book, because none of them are actual people with personalities, just props needed to tell the story.

with that in mind, i don't think i could stomach reading about gay youth being tortured at a conversion camp. we all know how difficult a subject it is & it deserves more care than this book offers.

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know, the thing about family is that you can choose it. And I choose you.

On my blog.

Rep: lesbian mcs, trans side character, gay side character

CWs: homophobia (from family, slurs, telling them they're disgusting/going to hell), conversion therapy (aversion therapy with freezing water, later electroshock therapy), transphobia, suicide attempt

I put off writing this review so that I wasn’t some combination of fuming and heartbroken over this book when I wrote it. Only, every time I think about it, my heart starts aching, so obviously, getting over it isn’t going to happen any time soon. (Also, not fuming in a bad way, more like fuming because of what happens in the book, because it just makes you feel so much.)

Orpheus Girl is a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, where hell (death) is conversion therapy, and they’re both lesbians. It’s narrated by Raya, a lesbian teen in a hugely conservative and religious town, who’s in love with her best friend. Then said best friend, Sarah, kisses her, and they start a relationship in secret, risking being found and sent to conversion therapy (which subsequently does happen).

I think the sign of a good book is that it gives you strong emotions (unless it’s you being pissed off at the book, true). And Orpheus Girl did just that. I had to put it down at times because I was so angry at how Sarah and Raya were treated by the people who supposedly loved them and who they should have been able to trust. It’s one of those books that’ll leave you wanting to hit something, you’re so angry. But it also leaves you heartbroken (not because it’s a sad ending, don’t worry). Because it’s about the perpetuation of abuse in a way. Straight people abusing gay people into believing that they’re sinners/immoral/etc, and then the saddest bit, which is that the “cured” gay people go on to continue that abuse on another generation. (And now I want to hit something again.)

Anyway, I’m so glad there was a happy ending, because I don’t think I could have stood having my heart ripped to shreds like that and there not being one.

What I loved about this book was that it talked a lot about how you choose your family. And how you don’t have to forgive your blood family when they abuse you like this. Because a lot of books have found families, and the idea of choosing your family, but not so many that tell you you’re not at all obligated to forgive people who do such terrible things to you. It’s refreshing, to be honest.

Finally, this is a very character-driven book, so obviously the characters had to be sympathetic and compelling. Which, duh, they were. I loved Sarah and Raya and Leon and Clio, and I spent most of the book being really nervous about what was going to happen to them next.

In the end, the only issue I really had with this was that they didn’t burn the conversion therapy centre to the ground before they left.

[Tucker Almengor]

Many thanks to Soho Teen for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

Putting this down for now. Right now, I'm trying to stick to lighter books.

----------

This sounds like the perfect blend of heartbreaking, funny and, in the end, inspiring.

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[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 Stars

Full review here

Trigger warnings: homophobia, starvation, conversion therapy, physical and psychological torture, misgendering, self-harm, suicide attempt.

This book deals with some heavy themes and I'm not going to lie, it is not an easy read. This book tells the story of some young and queer people trying to escape from a place that is probably one of the closest things to hell this world has to offer: a conversion camp. To think that the things described in this book, such as conversion therapy where people are tortured, happen in real life is horrible and terrifying. But before arriving in this hell there's a lot of trauma that we see at the beginning of the book, such as the Raya and Sarah getting publicly outed and also their families sending them away because they think that the girls have some kind of problem for being who they truly are. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. After not being accepted from the people that are supposed to love them, these girls get sent away to essentially be tortured.

The strength that Raya, the main character and also the narrator of this book, shows even in the most dreadful of times is amazing. Even in the worst moments, when we feel like all hope is lost, she focuses on the only positive aspects: her girlfriend Sarah, who is there with her, and the other young people that are living this hell on earth alongside her. Such strength is only to be admired.

Even though this book is not an easy read, it's definitely an eye-opening one that will make you realize the horrors that unfortunately some people have to go through.

[destiny ♡ howling libraries]

DNF @ 20%

I'm putting this down for 2 reasons:

1) I'll be honest, I can't do a painful queer book right now. I'm not saying they don't need to exist, because they absolutely do. We need stories like this that tell people — especially cishet readers — how brutal the world's treatment of queer folks can be. But that doesn't mean that I, as a queer woman, am always going to be in the right mindset for reading it myself, and right now, I'm not in the right place for it. Things aren't bad yet, but I've been warned of specifics later in the book, and I know right now that the whole conversion therapy plot in general isn't jiving with my mental health, and there's nothing wrong with that!

2) I don't enjoy the narrative voice. This is the only reason this is going on my DNF shelf instead of my "finish-me-soon" shelf. If I liked the writing in this more, I would wholeheartedly snatch this story back up the moment I felt up to the subject matter, but unfortunately, the narration is lackluster and the characters are one-dimensional.

This was one of my most anticipated fall 2019 releases, so I'm pretty bummed out to put this one down.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an arc from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Content warnings: homophobia, lesbophobic slurs, homophobic slurs, conversion therapy, offscreen suicide attempt

This book is kind of the tragically beautiful you may expect from the summary and a book based on a Greek myth. It's a rare case of YA with an established relationship.

The writing in this was very atmospheric. It fit the book really well.

I also really loved the relationship. It was so soft and I wanted nothing but the best for these girls.

It's definitely a heavy book, and I definitely recommend if you can handle heavy subjects.

[John Gilbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was pretty hard going at times. Raya is our MC living with her Grandma in a small Texas town where she is outed after being caught in a compromising position with her close friend Sarah and both are sent to a conversion home, which is brutal. Meeting some interesting characters there, both survive, but can never go home again. Not an easy read, but well done. 3 stars.

[Sofii♡ (A Book. A Thought.) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to thank Edelweiss+ and Soho Teen for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book that certainly puts me in a difficult situation because of the fact that, as I mentioned in my little review after reading it, it's very difficult to describe but it was very easy to feel, and I see that this fact will make it difficult to explain myself, but still I'll try as always with the greatest respect. I think this is a solid book since I think it's quite clear what the author wants to express with it, it's not easy to read, though, because it's really painful, I'll explain a little later, but it also has a powerful touch of reality and discovery that really reaches your heart and makes it very difficult to stop reading because you want to know what will happen to the characters.


Source

3/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

You can find more of my reviews on my blog A Book. A Thought.


The book follows Raya, who has been abandoned by her mother as a child and has been raised by her grandmother. Raya's going through a moment of personal discovery and has realized that the great friendship that unites her with her best friend Sarah, has always been something more like love. Both are very afraid of coming out because they live in a small, highly religious and conservative town, so when their families and the entire town finds out about their relationship, they're both sent to a re-education camp to "fix" them. Once there, they suffer the worst treatment and Raya begins to see herself as Orpheus and decides that her mission is to rescue her beloved from that hell to finally escape all those abuses.


Even now, when I think of the book I feel a pain in my stomach, and it's really difficult for me to describe it, as it's difficult to tell you whether I liked it or not. I think it's a powerful and shocking story that crudely presents how cruel people can be when they can't accept diversity. On the one hand, I feel that there's a great truth in all this, even today there are many entire communities that don't accept queer/trans people and denigrate them in unimaginable ways, so of course this book has a great realistic impact, I must give credit to the author for that, because although it's very difficult to read about this type of discrimination and degradation to a human being, it is also important to open your eyes and know that these dark and terrible things really happen out there. On the other hand, and here I want to bring you a point that I want to make very clear, I feel that this book is extremely and unnecessarily painfully. I understand what the author wants to tell and convey, but I personally think that there's a limit of suffering when these types of topics are touched. What do I mean by this? well, I'm not queer, but I still defend LGBT+ rights a lot so this story impacts me a lot and I had to put the book down for a while because provoked a very high level of pain on me, so I can't even imagine what it will mean to all my beloved queer/trans people out there.

This is really personal too, but I think maybe in order to want to create a shocking story that reaches many people and becomes popular, unnecessary boundaries are crossed. I can really count on the fingers of one hand the times I experience a good feeling reading this little book, and I think it really was like 2 times. The rest is a torment of negative emotions and we experience moments where we read about people being tortured until they lose their heads or almost die, in very hard-hitting scenes. I don't know if I would recommend something like this to my dear friends, you know? I don't want to be bad, but this is exactly what I feel. You don't have to make a plot like this, where people are tortured to torment and subjected to great subhuman humiliation to cause an impact.


Well, I really needed to put those feelings out there, now talking about some positive things, I'm fascinated by the element of mythology, you already know that I think it's very well thought out and how each mythological character is brought to life is very interesting to see.

Loved the love story between Sarah and Raya, if this romance had happened at another time, it would have been all pure happiness and enjoyment. It shows and feels very honest and there's also a certain innocence of the discovery going on among the girls who made me smile. It's sad to see everything they have to go through and how much they have to fight to be together or not, because their future is really uncertain. It's all very unfair what happens to them, but well, I suppose it's the point of the book, right? I still think they're adorable together, I really like this relationship.


The writing style is very good and addictive, which eases the read so hard content. Despite the things I didn't like about the book, I highlight the way it's written and I would like to read more about the author at some point.

I recommend this book? Maybe, but not for everyone, that's for sure. If you're a sensitive person, maybe you should pass, but if you're interested in reading a powerful story about the difficult path that these queer and trans boys must go through to be able to have some kind of future then go for it, I think that despite everything it has a very interesting voice and the characters are good.


I want to make clear before finishing, that I get the author's idea with this story and I respect her point of view and her way of writing that is very successful, but I don't share the need to use a plot so exaggeratedly violent and sad to prove a point. I think this could negatively impact people of the LGBT+ community, that's why I recommend discretion and send you all my love!


TW : self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, and violence against LGBTQ characters.




Original Thoughts | 10-05-2019

This is one of those books that's actually very difficult to describe, but easy to feel.
If you're a queer person then surely it will be a lot more touching and harder for you to read this, but still, a little bit of this story stays with me. I love the management of mythology within the story and as the author refers to it in the end, I think it's a great detail.
This short story follows a group of gay/trans boys trying to escape from a very dark place so they can be free and live their lives as they want. It's sad and really heartbreaking, but it has a lot of meaning as well and soon I'll try to elaborate the plot a little more, in my FULL REVIEW.
I have A LOT of feelings right now, that's for sure.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one started out really good in the first few pages. Our main character confused and mysterious and dark and delicious. A mother who she only knows as someone playing Aphrodite on screen and she being the daughter longing for her mother. Our main character is also confused about her sexuality and she so knows what's going to happen if she jumps into a forbidden relationship.

But baam! The relationship happens. She's no longer confused. Everything keeps happening and the writing got too boring. The grandmother who was so controlling turned indifferent all of a sudden.
The writing is so underwhelming except for the first few pages. The characters are underdeveloped. The sexuality issues and the young characters exploring their sexuality have not been represented well at all. The better parts of the story is all about homophobia but this too has not been represented the way any character would feel that scared or obtracized. All the main character's interest seem to lie in hooking up and not getting caught but behaving in such a way she wanted to get caught. At the most, what this book made me feel was getting irritated with the main character. These characters are really careless and appear rather stupid given the fact that they wanted to be careful and not get caught and stay safe. And the rest of the characters' job is just to be homophobic and call names. And several other characters did get introduced to help shape the main character. But sadly, it didn't work.

I didn't care at all about how the book ended. But yes, I did read till the end. But the ending was underwhelming as well.

I won't recommend this book. Poorly executed. Retelling not done justice.

[Eva B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orpheus Girl is very short at under 200 pages, and I think its issue is that it has too much story. The prose is beautiful, and I loved Raya, Sarah, and Leon, but between the weirdly nonlinear storytelling at the beginning and the rushed ending, it loses a star. You know how people criticize The Miseducation of Cameron Post for having too much fluff at the beginning? This is kind of the same way, with Sarah and Raya being caught together multiple times and Raya reflecting on her realization of her sexuality. I really liked the beginning, but once they arrived at the camp, things changed. I loved Leon, and the defiance of Sarah and Raya, but while what was happening to the queer characters was truly horrendous, it loses impact because we don't know them prior to this. Miseducation had a long beginning so we could meet Cameron before she's sent to conversion therapy because the impact of what we see is worse when we know and love the character, and while I enjoyed Raya and Sarah, the impact wasn't as strong because we only have fortyso pages to meet them.

Nevertheless, this was still a deeply impactful book, and one that truly gets what it's like to be closeted, to constantly be putting on this persona of who you are and constantly wondering if any little thing you did would get you found out. I went to a religious private school until my freshman year, and my final year there was filled with anxiety because I was worried about what would happen if people there found out I was queer, and while I doubt it would have been this (I'm from a fairly liberal area), there's no doubt that many friendships would have been changed. And Raya's discussion on how the homophobes that are quiet about it are the worst kind also rings true, I've had several times where I'm talking to old friends from school who casually mention something like "I really hope that Disney doesn't make Elsa gay, that would ruin the movie" or "those two characters can't kiss, they're both boys" and there's really no worse feeling than to realize that people you've known for years would see you differently because of something you can't control and didn't choose.

All in all, this was a beautifully written book despite its problems, and with one of the prettiest covers ever.

[fer bañuelos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hace mucho no leía un libro que me hiciera sentir tanto y que hubiera sentido un nudo en el pecho mientras lo leía.

Orpheus Girl es un retrato sobre lo que vive mucha gente queer y es una clara representación de lo que es vivir el infierno en la tierra. Es una historia cruda, difícil de leer y a veces abrumadora, pero sobre todo es una historia esperanzadora. Me dolía el cuerpo mientras lo leía, pero al mismo tiempo me sentía feliz porque son historias como esta las que nos hacen abrir los ojos y estoy muy feliz de que se esté hablando de estos temas.

Sara y Raya son dos chicas que son destruidas gracias a la ignorancia y odio de la sociedad. Son chicas que son maltratadas y lastimados por algo tan normal como lo es su sexualidad y leer su historia me rompió el corazón. Brynne Rebele-Henry hace un espectacular trabajo mostrando su realidad y, aunque a veces es muy cruda, es digna de ser leída.

Yo creo que mi crítica principal a este libro es que, para mi gusto, es demasiado corto. Orpheus Girl es una historia acerca de salir del closet, de ir a terapia de conversión y de enamorarse. Es demasiado para 160 páginas. Por más que me haya gustado este libro no puedo evitar sentir que muchos de los temas que se abordan son apenas tocados a nivel superficie, y creo que la historia de Sara y Raya se habría beneficiado al ser más larga y permitir más desarrollo en lo que viven.

Espero que la autora saque otro libro de este tipo, o que explore diferentes problemáticas en sus siguientes trabajos, porque tiene una voz que merece ser escuchada, además que Orpheus Girl ya es uno de los libros más importantes que he leído. Solo puedo imaginarme que otra joya nos puede traer.

[siren ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"She's gripping red flowers in her left hand, so tightly they start to fall apart. She stands up, and then there's a door hanging over our heads and she turns to me. 'You go first. But don't look back.' But I do look back. I do."

Haunting and needed, ORPHEUS GIRL dives deep into the heartbreak, devastation and resilience teenage lesbian Raya feels when she is sent by her bigoted Christian grandmother to a "conversion camp" after being caught with her girlfriend.

Heavy trigger warning for homophobia, slurs, attempted suicide, self-harm, and physical and emotional torture.

This book is a short but compelling and emotional retelling of the Orpheus myth with a queer lens. The ache and hope I felt while reading this book reduced me to sobs at the end. This book is so important for allowing readers who are not queer to experience first hand the terror of homophobia, especially when that homophobia is "well-intentioned". It also shows queer readers that they are not alone, that they are worth fighting for, and that family can be found even in the darkest of places.

Sometimes your family isn't your blood and that's perfectly okay. ORPHEUS GIRL nails that and I haven't stopped thinking about this book for hours. I highly recommend it.

Thank you to Soho Press for sending me an ARC to review. All opinions are my own!

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up

Mixed feelings on this one. The actual writing is lovely and I think you can tell the author has a background in poetry. I also like the idea of a queer retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice where hades or hell is a Christian conversion camp, though I would say the retelling elements are quite loose. The topic is important, and I'll be honest, I didn't realize quite how horrendous these conversion camps are in terms of literal torture methods. And that's on me for not having read this kind of story before. It's a lot and we get very graphic descriptions of things like electroshock therapy. I see what the story was doing and I like what it's doing, but it's not perfect.

The characterization of people and their relationships with each other is kind of weak, and as I've seen other reviewers call out, this never mentions queer identities outside of gay, lesbian, and trans. This is also a really rough book to put in the hands of a teenager. It's YA, but I don't think this would be my pick. The characters don't have a lot of agency, and the open ending isn't actually all that hopeful. I think there is probably a better way to tackle this very important subject matter for the age group. Either way though, it's going to be harrowing.

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received an ARC from Netgalley and Soho Teen in exchange for my honest review.

This is a hard book to review. I was so desperate to love it. A wlw retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice sounded like the best thing ever. I wish it had lived up to my expectations. Maybe that's my fault for wanting too much from it.

In my view, simply having the protagonist state over and over again 'I'm like Orpheus because I'm going to rescue the girl I love' does not a retelling make. The idea behind this book is incredibly interesting, and I think it's absolutely within the author's remit. She's clearly very talented, and honestly, I think this book could have worked with a lot more editing. However, having the book segmented and titling each section after aspects of the myth doesn't make each section actually resemble the myth structurally. Towards the end, the retelling aspect finally came together for me with a very clever musing on what it actually means for Orpheus to look back, but it was too little too late for me. It was frustrating because it showed what the author was capable of, but the book didn't deliver.

Myth was used very oddly in this book. The protagonist constantly makes reference to really esoteric myths (e.g. Atalanta, who I would say is not the best known of mythic characters) but we never see her reading mythology, or studying it, or talking about it to someone else. We never get a sense that she actually knows or loves these myths for her to be referencing them. We never get any sense of depth at all from any of the characters. We randomly hear facts about people (e.g. we learn about halfway through that the narrator's grandmother presses and sells corsages) but just learning a fact about a person, apropros of nothing, doesn't give us any window into who they are as a person, especially when the fact comes from nowhere and is never mentioned again. The characters of Hyde and Char are particularly bad; Char flip-flops from one extreme to the other with no continuity and no reason. Even the main love interest, Sarah, has no personality. She drinks black coffee and prefers it when it's gritty because she likes the bitterness. OK, but what does that mean for her? How does this manifest?

There were some other things that made me uncomfortable, too. There's a Russian character who speaks like a parody of every Russian character ever (e.g. dropping 'the' a lot, getting American idioms wrong in a way that's portrayed as something to laugh at). The plot culminates in the attempted suicide of a trans character, who has barely any role in the novel before that point and whose fate we never hear about; his suicide attempt is just a vehicle for the cis characters to escape, and using trans suicide like that is really iffy to me. The majority of the second half of the book is just graphic (and inaccurate) depictions of electric shock treatment (it's administered without anaesthetic), which struck me as somewhat ableist for those who still undergo ECT. These are all things that we are past accepting, particularly in YA literature, and it was disappointing to see them here.

The actual writing is beautiful, and the author absolutely has a talent for words beyond her years, but it does not translate into a coherent or well-structured narrative. I believe that she's usually a poet, and I have to say that this book would have been so, so much better had she written it as a series of poems. Poetry is different from narrative fiction and the two require different things to work. This book needed characterisation and effective plot. Poetry needs beautiful language and imagery, amongst other things, which this book has in spades. I would have eaten this book up if it had been allowed to be the poetry that this author is clearly comfortable with.

I wanted to love this book. I really, really did. I can't recommend it in its current state, but I think the author is going to do very exciting things in the future. She's already written more than most people twice her age, and the quality of her writing is ridiculously advanced. I just don't think this novel is ready yet, not without a lot of editorial guidance.

[Nataly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 5/31/20 5 Stars Again! One of my favorites!

5 Stars!

"I can find the strength to fight again."

CHARACTERS:
__________
I have never related to a character so much. I see so much of myself in Raya, and the struggles she faces in her small town I completely felt on a personal level as I also live in a southern small town. Throughout High School, all my queer friends were ostracized just for being queer, so it was so much easier to hide in the closet. Raya goes through the exact same thing and I have never read a book with a character that I relate to more. Raya's mother also walked out on her at a young age, just like my mom did and it was just so amazing to see a character so much like me.


PLOT/WORLD-BUILDING:
__________
Knowing about LGBT+ conversion camps are one thing, but reading about them in detail is another. This book took my heart out of my chest and the breath from my lungs. This was so hard to read and I cried the entire time I read it. This book isn't driven by characters or crazy plot lines, but it is an ode to the harsh reality of what some LGBT+ members have had to endure. This book is a factual recognition of a queer's worst nightmare come true, and it is so heartbreaking but informative.


WRITING:
__________
I loved the writing. The author doesn't tiptoe around or sugarcoat anything. The writing was practical and beautiful and the author's voice is so strong and unabashedly queer. I have also never read a book that explicitly mentions the trigger/content warnings at the beginning and I appreciate that so much. This book just overall floored me.


FINAL THOUGHTS:
__________
I cannot put into words how much I loved this book. I felt like this book was written just for me, and the main character is so much like me. This book hurt me and fixed me at the same time. I read this at such a good time and this is the LGBT+ book I have been searching for my entire life. I am crying just writing this review, definitely one of my favorites of the year.

TW: Homophobia, Transphobia, Violence(Against LGBT+ characters), Self-Harm, Harsh Langauge

[(inactive) · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was beautiful and raw and real. i really, really liked it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin... I confess, I didn't have a clue about what conversion therapy was all about. Maybe "OMG" would be an honest thought. I found a quote I liked, because I need to get up to speed on how to review a novel without spoiling if for those opening the book for the first time...

“Raya and Sarah's story is a credit to Rebele-Henry's own teen voice, mature beyond her years. The emotionally dramatic narrative . . . rings incredibly true.”
—NPR

[bella · Rating 3 out of 5]

content and trigger warnings: self-harm, transphobia, misgendering, homophobia, violence against LGBTQ characters, death, car accident, child abandonment, surgery mention, harm/death of animals, grief, homophobic slurs, blood, violence, outing, religion, conversion therapy, abuse, harassment, electrocution/electroshock therapy, torture, starvation, suicide, body horror (in nightmares), nightmares

[jut · Rating 5 out of 5]

be careful because this book talks about conversion therapy and really heavy topics so it might be trigger for someone! but it is an awesome book with a powerful story about fighting for yourself.

[cate · Rating 4 out of 5]

my heart is oh so very heavy

[Sasha Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

TW: self-harm, homophobia, transphobia, conversion therapy, abuse, attempted suicide, suicide ideation, deadnaming, electroshock therapy

this was the most difficult YA book i ever read. the writing is so good and so poetic but the topic is so difficult to handle especially since i'm not in a place where i can come out. i kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it did and it kept getting worse then it got better. raya's courage and perseverance is astounding and something to aspire to. i just don't get it. who would rather have a traumatized, abused child than a gay one? who sends their kids these places knowing how they're treated?

[rey · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’m shaking in my boots that was powerful