Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Anne of Greenville by Mariko Tamaki

4 reviews

genevieve_eggleston's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Racism, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Homophobia, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Outing, Toxic friendship, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Hate crime, Misogyny, and Cursing

Minor: Death of parent, Physical abuse, Violence, Grief, Alcohol, Classism, Cultural appropriation, and Injury/Injury detail

theespressoedition's review against another edition

2.0

I wanted to love this, but I just couldn’t. The concept was great. The execution was not. It was very angry and frustrating and took WAY too long to develop. I shouldn’t have been wondering what would happen with 6 pages left. The dialogue and writing was bizarre. Too many questions and uses of “like.” Just definitely not my jam, sadly. It makes me so sad ugh 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Bullying, Classism, Sexism, Toxic friendship, Cursing, Lesbophobia, Racial slurs, and Homophobia

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Vomit, and Fire/Fire injury

crizzle's review

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Bullying

Moderate: Body shaming, Cursing, Gaslighting, Racism, Toxic friendship, and Fatphobia

Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, and Blood

missrosymaplemoth's review

3.0

I liked, and didn’t like, a lot of things about this book.

My dislikes:

• The excessive use of CAPITALIZATION!
• The excessive use of ending sentences with a question mark? Even when it often didn’t make sense?
• The, like, excessive use of “like”
• Assuming the audience doesn’t know any disco music and listing the artist, album title and year every song was released. It got repetitive and was never not annoying.

My likes:

• Anne’s character, personality and narration was mostly really bubbly and joyful.
• The end where
  Spoiler

  Berry’s last name is revealed to be Blythe
  was unexpected and really satisfying for me.
• Mr. Davidson, Beverly, and Monty the dog.

This is not a retelling of “Anne of Green Gables,” so if you’re coming into this book with that expectation, you will be disappointed, as I was. Around the 50% mark I let go of that expectation and it made for a more enjoyable reading experience. It’s not a bad book, it’s just not what it says it is (an “Anne” retelling). I don’t know how one would successfully go about retelling that story.

I debating even finishing this book because it felt like 250 straight pages of a girl being violently bullied and then the adults around her failing her in the aftermath. I really disliked the resolution as it was crammed into the last 30 pages. It was hard to believe these bully kids could go from being seriously racist, sexist and homophobic to suddenly nice and kind just because

Spoiler

they were put in their place by the drama teacher

. Gilly was annoying. The others were infuriating.

I was surprised this was YA; Anne often read as much younger, and this could have been a middle grade book if the excess swearing was omitted. (I’m not sure what the qualifications for a middle grade book are.) I kept forgetting she was an older teenager.

All in all, I still enjoyed this book. Anne’s character and worldview kept me reading until the end. Anne Shirley is one of my favorite characters of all time, so it makes sense why I’d enjoy it if this Anne was modeled after her.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Racism, and Homophobia

Moderate: Toxic friendship, Cursing, Hate crime, and Sexism