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hojichai's review
4.0
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY!
Our Phones -> Wireless
Cars -> Keyless
Tools -> Cordless
Leaders -> Shameless
Relationships -> Meaningless
Babies -> Fatherless
Government -> Useless
Parliament -> CLUELESS
Everything is becoming LESS but our hope in God is—Endless. In fact I am Speechless Because Salvation remains Priceless!!!
in all seriousness though this was a heartwarming story of friendship and community told through a refreshing perspective!! the characters were full of personality and depth and i love them all. except maree. F U MAREE I HATE U. its also an important read on gentrification that is really accessible to younger audiences which i think is great!!
Our Phones -> Wireless
Cars -> Keyless
Tools -> Cordless
Leaders -> Shameless
Relationships -> Meaningless
Babies -> Fatherless
Government -> Useless
Parliament -> CLUELESS
Everything is becoming LESS but our hope in God is—Endless. In fact I am Speechless Because Salvation remains Priceless!!!
in all seriousness though this was a heartwarming story of friendship and community told through a refreshing perspective!! the characters were full of personality and depth and i love them all. except maree. F U MAREE I HATE U. its also an important read on gentrification that is really accessible to younger audiences which i think is great!!
thebookberrie's review against another edition
Like Home is about a girl named Nelo who loves her neighborhood, Ginger East. She's grown up there with her friends and loves the vibe and sense of community. After a deadly incident at the local arcade, all of Nelo's friends moved away except for Kate. Kate's parents own the corner store and when it gets vandalized, Nelo is shaken to the core. Suddenly the world has its eyes on Ginger East, wanting to fix it.
I had an okay time with this book! I loved that it was all about community and friendship but also about slapping topics like discrimination and social problems. Nelo loves her neighborhood so much but she also sees it from one side while everyone else, including the media and her ex friend who twists it into something else.
Nelo has all these friends and I liked their stories but sometimes I was just like is this necessary? It felt like people just kept showing up and I'm dumb. Plus I wanted to fight Maree SO badly. But the romance was cute and while this book deals with some hard hitting stuff, it managed to stay light enough and I liked that. The ending was sweet as well!
This is my bad but oh my god I thought this took place in the 90s. I guess every time they mentioned Youtube my brain just said no because??
I had an okay time with this book! I loved that it was all about community and friendship but also about slapping topics like discrimination and social problems. Nelo loves her neighborhood so much but she also sees it from one side while everyone else, including the media and her ex friend who twists it into something else.
Nelo has all these friends and I liked their stories but sometimes I was just like is this necessary? It felt like people just kept showing up and I'm dumb. Plus I wanted to fight Maree SO badly. But the romance was cute and while this book deals with some hard hitting stuff, it managed to stay light enough and I liked that. The ending was sweet as well!
This is my bad but oh my god I thought this took place in the 90s. I guess every time they mentioned Youtube my brain just said no because??
slsj_'s review against another edition
5.0
As a teen girl I couldn’t imagine reading a book like this.
I used to aggressively search Goodreads lists for any book to read with a black MC. I’d barely find anything that wasn’t about police brutality or written by a white author that didn’t do the character justice. Now I have the pleasure to read a book by a black Canadian women about a black Canadian girl and her very real experience about friendship, community, and accepting change. I LOVE TO SEE IT!!!!!
The humour in this book is everything. It was so relatable from the texts to the friendships to roasting. It reminds me of what I was like at 15. The sense of community is phenomenal and even though I’ve never had this experience, I got it so vividly. Amazing writing, great character building. All around solid read I can’t wait for this author’s next book.
I used to aggressively search Goodreads lists for any book to read with a black MC. I’d barely find anything that wasn’t about police brutality or written by a white author that didn’t do the character justice. Now I have the pleasure to read a book by a black Canadian women about a black Canadian girl and her very real experience about friendship, community, and accepting change. I LOVE TO SEE IT!!!!!
The humour in this book is everything. It was so relatable from the texts to the friendships to roasting. It reminds me of what I was like at 15. The sense of community is phenomenal and even though I’ve never had this experience, I got it so vividly. Amazing writing, great character building. All around solid read I can’t wait for this author’s next book.
marieintheraw's review against another edition
4.0
The writing in this is gorgeous and worthy of the pre-release comparisons. This story is complex with such an amazing friendship at the heart of it. I can not wait to see what Louisa Onomé does next if this was only her debut!
I received an ecopy of this book via Netgalley; however, my opinions are my own.
I received an ecopy of this book via Netgalley; however, my opinions are my own.
lezreadalot's review against another edition
4.0
Why does it seem like the older you get, the more everything changes and the more miserable you are? And nothing stays the same. Not one thing.
This one took a while to find its legs, but by the end I was thoroughly invested and really charmed.
I thought this was going to be a straightforward story about gentrification, wrapped up in young adult packaging, and I was totally on board for that. It's an important message and I enjoy the fact that it's being written for teens. I also loved that all of our main characters were the children of immigrants; it's an unspoken commonality that binds them all together, together with the neighbourhood that they share. And if that was all the novel was going to be about, I think I've have been satisfied?
But after a while (and if I have a complaint, it's that it was after a long while; idk if I'm just used to different pacing, but it felt like it took so long before we started exploring things beyond the surface level) things got deeper. This is a story about loving where you're from, the fierce pride that can grow out of a neighbourhood; the outrage and fear when people on the outside see the place you love as something different and ugly; the confusion and frustration when not everyone who lives there feels the same way you do. Nelo is young and idealistic and a little naïve and so fierce, and she was the perfect vehicle for his story. Things got messy, and there were a few conversations that came up that I just wasn't expecting to see in this book, and made the experience even better.
I also just love stories about friendships; how they can change over time and how we deal with that. I loved the friend group in this (though I was a little disappointed that it mostly focused on three of the characters we see on the cover) and I especially loved their text chains? Something about it was just pitch perfect, and exactly how you'd expect friends who've know each other for so long to talk to each other.
This was a great debut; different in all the best ways. It's far from being typical YA read, and I definitely recommend it.
☆ Review copy provided via the publisher and NetGalley.
smolartist11's review against another edition
The writing didn't really hit and it seemed a little overdramatic to me? I don't know how else to explain it but it felt childish
jwinchell's review
4.0
This is a well-written YA book about loving your neighborhood and dealing with encroaching gentrification, with a sweet dose of romance thrown in. Nelo loves her neighborhood, Ginger East, even though all but her best friend have moved away because of perceptions of danger and crime. Her best friend Kate Tran’s family’s store is central to Nelo’s Ginger East identity, so it’s a big deal when someone bricks the window. Nelo is convinced it’s an outsider and sets out to figure out the crime. Kate becomes distant and weird, just as her childhood friendship with Rafa is rekindled. Nelo comes to grips with encroaching gentrification and lots of changes, most of which she resists at first. There’s so much texting and the centrality of phones is notable— this part felt very authentic to the way youth today use their phones to communicate. A light romance thrown in to a little mystery. A welcome read where protest and social justice are strong interests.