Such a tender, great YA. It's hard not to get sucked into Jade's world and yearn for her breakthrough into herself. Great for students to understand black perspectives, and great for educators to remind themselves that what their students want often times isn't what we expect.
Oh man, what an amazing ending to this trilogy. Dark, terrible, amazing. Gripping. I was GRIPPED!!!
I'll be honest, I don't generally enjoy books that light up on booktok. Not because of the books themselves, but because I think booktok doesn't uplift books that are necessarily good, but just ones that hit the right buzzwords for the algorithm. (Hear more about my distaste for booktok in my 12 hour video essay, "Wow, Tiktok is literally ruining the world")
All of that said, I went into Iron Widow with some skepticism, and was so pleasantly surprised. The action is tight and gripping. The stakes have consequences (mostly). And the love triangle turns into an actual "these two boys are kissing" triangle (Okay, Challengers (2024)). But mostly, I just liked it. I will be reading the second one most absolutely.
What an interesting, beautiful book. Dripping with visceral and uncomfortable sexuality that could only come from a deeply confused 16 year old boy.
I think this is the kind of book that I will come back to a few decades from now and reread, with an even greater connection than I do now. Until then, I give it 5/5, easily.
Burning, intense, sexy, tragic, visceral. Octavia, you've done it again!!!
I love when I'm reading a book and ask myself "Wait, is this gay?" And then later find out that millions of people around the world have been passionately debating the answer to that question for years.
5/5 loved it.
Maybe my favorite in the series (so far). We'll see how I enjoy Patternmaster, but this one was just incredible. Large departure from the slow burning and philosophical considerations of the first two. I read it VERY quickly.
