Dear Justyce - Nic Stone

 My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Shortly after teenager Quan enters a not guilty plea for the shooting death of a police officer, he is placed in a holding cell to await trial. Through a series of flashbacks and letters to Justyce, the protagonist of Dear Martin, Quan's story unravels.

From a troubled childhood and bad timing to a coerced confession and prejudiced police work, Nic Stone's newest novel takes an unflinching look at the flawed practices and ideologies that discriminate against African American boys and minorities in the American justice system."

Nic Stone's author note says it all when she says the hardest thing about telling this story was "knowing the most fictional part is the support Quan receives." The entire time I read this, all I could think about was how different life would be for countless young people in the United States if they had a support system. Even Quan, although he connects with a solid support system while awaiting trial, could have gone down a completely different path if he had that kind of support earlier on. (Spoiler incoming)

There were big things that went wrong for Quan, but there were so many tiny ways society let him down, too. Imagine, for instance, if when Quan's math teacher went on maternity leave, the substitute who replaced her was as supportive as she had been instead of being actively the opposite. How different could things have been? This book shines a light on so many of the ways we as a society have let each other down. It shines a light on our broken criminal injustice system, as Justyce refers to it, and how badly it needs to be improved.

Red, White & Royal Blue - Final thoughts

 My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"When his mother became President of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius - his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with an actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex/Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family and state and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: Stage a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instagrammable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the presidential campaign and upend two nations. It raises the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through?"

Before we get started, I've got to qualify my rating a bit. I would rate about the first 150 pages of this at three, but the last half is a solid five, and so...here we are at four. My biggest wish for the start of the book is that the rivalry between Alex and Henry was better. Obviously it couldn't be anything gigantic, otherwise it would have been pretty unbelievable that the pair would develop feelings for each other, but it swung way too far the other direction and was less a "beef" between rivals and more a secret one-sided dislike because as teenagers Henry was a little rude to Alex once. Not the most compelling start to a story. It didn't hook me.

That said, if you can move past that weak rivalry tea and press on, I ended up shipping Alex and Henry hard (also June and Nora, but that's a blog post for another day, I suppose). Honestly, I would read 400+ pages JUST of Alex and Henry's emails. Most of my biggest laughs came either from those exchanges or their texts earlier on, and their email postscripts never failed to leave me teary-eyed. I also bawled for like the last 75 pages of the book, which...granted, I am known to cry at a book, but not usually that excessively. 

I don't even know what to say about why this story got me so far into my feels, beyond that the relationships Casey McQuiston developed were beautiful. Whether its Henry and Alex fighting for each other or their loved ones positioned fiercely at their backs no matter what, I am here for all of it. It was also strangely uplifting to spend some time in this alternate reality in which the US didn't elect a fascist garbage human as President and instead went with the candidate who had the best interests not only of the country but also of her family at heart. In her acknowledgements, McQuiston admits that after the 2016 election she gave up on writing the book for months, and I'm so glad she ultimately decided to keep going. This book was a much-needed reminder for me that even when things feel hopeless, there are people who genuinely care and want what's best for their country and the people around them. 

#FlashbackFriday - We Are Not Yet Equal

Instead of a review this week (NOT because I haven't finished anything, I swear! I have, but I don't have a new review in me right now.), we'll be celebrating #FlashbackFriday and looking back on a review I wrote two years ago, almost to the day, on August 17th, for We Are Not Yet Equal by Carol Anderson. It seemed like an appropriate review to revisit.

We Are Not Yet Equal is the young adult adaptation of Carol Anderson's New York Times Bestseller White Rage. White Rage was published in 2016, following commentary on "black rage" after the murder of Michael Brown in 2014 and an op-ed Anderson wrote in response. We Are Not Yet Equal came out two years later, in 2018. Now here we are, in the dumpster fire that is 2020, and these books remain every bit as relevant as they were upon being published. And I can't help but keep coming back to the quote I pulled for my original review from the epilogue.

"Imagine if, instead of continually refighting the Civil War, we had actually moved on to rebuilding..."

Is this the time? Is this finally the year that white people like me reckon with the power we unfairly hold and the ways in which we reinforce the white supremacist ideals the United States is built on and start contributing to the work dismantling systems designed to oppress people who don't look like us? Is this the year people complaining about keeping "politics" out of whatever sphere they find themselves in recognize a. what a privilege it is to be able to do that and b. that human rights and basic decency are not "politics"? We've all seen the energy picking up these last couple months, and I hope that keeps up. A few ways I am trying to educate myself and stay engaged:

• Contacting my representatives. You can find scripts for issues you feel strongly about at https://5calls.org/, as well as contact information for your local reps. And while we're at it, fucking VOTE, y'all, in federal and local elections. Want change? The best place to start is in your local sphere.
• Unlearning the fake history I grew up being taught and relearning ACTUAL history using resources like this.
• Showing my support for protesters from a distance by donating to bail funds and community organizations.

What are you doing to keep yourself energized and engaged?

Red, White & Royal Blue - Update 1

I started a new position on Monday, so it's been a slow reading week. I managed to get a little over 100 pages into Red, White & Royal Blue, though, and I figured I would share my thoughts so far.

At first, Alex seemed, frankly, like a bit of a dick. We come into his story basically at the height of his "feud" with Prince Henry, and with zero backstory, it really seems like he dislikes Henry for being more attractive (?) than him, so he starts a bunch of shit even though Henry is perfectly civil to him.

Of course, we later find out that this isn't exactly the case, and while Alex still isn't my favorite MC ever, once I got a better read on the situation, he didn't seem like such a jerk. I'm a big fan of his exchanges back and forth with Henry, actually, and sometimes they even make me laugh out loud. Also, their first kiss?

Perfection.

I'm looking forward to reading more...and crossing my fingers I have more time this week!