General

[Colleen]

General thoughts?

[Colleen]

okay, so this is a pretty powerful book dealing with some pretty heavy stuff. it's well written, don't get me wrong, but i'm not a fan.
first of all, the treatment of trans* people in it is gross.
my second problem with it is the same as my problem with oitnb. they use a privilaged well off white person to talk about the struggles of poc mostly living in poverty.
it deals with the stigma of mental illness well, though, and that's why i finished it. not super well, but passibly. better than perks.
at the same time i feel it normalised it a little too much.

[Trish, IT]

The writing style was very Perks of Being a Wallflower-ish. If Charlie was less innocent, had a better writing voice, was into sex, and was a depressed artistic kid, this would be the book he would have written.

I did like the way it was written and I can tell if were written another way, some parts would not be as tolerable, or even enjoyable, as they were.

Okay, I definitely felt a little uncomfortable about Jennifer. It was disgusting no one in the book didn't refer to her as Jennifer and made her a joke (She was MtF, right? If not, please excuse that and make it Jennifer to Charles and she/her to he/him, I kind of missed that part).

I don't know what I was expecting, but I may have expected too much from this? I liked it a lot, but there were a lot of times I wanted Craig to get over himself for a while, and others I felt like we could talk a long time because he was relatable enough. It was a very clean book, which I think isn't what I expected it to be. I kind of expected a more... gritty story with some humor?

I like Ned Vizzini's style, so I will be interested in reading his other works. I really liked the book, but there were some things I can't really settle on comfortably if that makes any sense at all.