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A review by enbyreader
A Constellation of Minor Bears by Jen Ferguson
2.0
I still don't know what a minor bear is.
I feel bad giving this book 2 stars, because I'm all for diverse books and representation, but that shouldn't come at the expense of plot and basic character development. I don't feel like the main cast really grew as people over the course of the plot, which is a basic thing I look for in a book. This book really dragged in the middle - once Hank shows up on the trail, nothing substa tial changes for about 150 pages. The conflict between Molly and Tray, and Molly and Hank, got extremely repetitive. Sometimes they'd seem to forgive each other and be fine, and then the next chapter Molly was angry again for no reason. When Brynn joined the group, I thought she would cause the other three to develop as characters, but once she left, they just went right back to who they were before. Honestly, if this book were about Brynn and the main cast were background characters to HER story, it would've been a lot more interesting.
The dialogue was weird, like the author never met a teenager and wrote what she THOUGHT teenagers talk like after hearing about teenagers secondhand. The characters are so vague in their communications with each other - at one point, Molly says to Tray, "It is still bad." And I had no idea what she was talking about! I was 80+ pages in! It was like one of those hour-long TV shows where the plot could be resolved by two people having a 30-second conversation. This whole book felt like it could've been a novella, 100 pages max. I also had a hard time with my suspension of disbelief that the four hikers wander into a tiny town and somehow find two LGBT teens to hang out with right away. At that point the representation felt incredibly forced. Come to think of it, how were these teenagers' parents fine with their kids going off and hanging out with four other teens they'd never met, let alone spending a night in a hotel with these strangers??? This is a trail town, hikers come into town all the time - it makes no sense.
Between some chapters, there are short interjections of the components of a song, which are also somehow stars in a constellation. I'm not sure what that was supposed to be about, because it didn't seem to connect to the story at all.
Overall, I guess all I can say is that I was disappointed.
I feel bad giving this book 2 stars, because I'm all for diverse books and representation, but that shouldn't come at the expense of plot and basic character development. I don't feel like the main cast really grew as people over the course of the plot, which is a basic thing I look for in a book. This book really dragged in the middle - once Hank shows up on the trail, nothing substa tial changes for about 150 pages. The conflict between Molly and Tray, and Molly and Hank, got extremely repetitive. Sometimes they'd seem to forgive each other and be fine, and then the next chapter Molly was angry again for no reason. When Brynn joined the group, I thought she would cause the other three to develop as characters, but once she left, they just went right back to who they were before. Honestly, if this book were about Brynn and the main cast were background characters to HER story, it would've been a lot more interesting.
The dialogue was weird, like the author never met a teenager and wrote what she THOUGHT teenagers talk like after hearing about teenagers secondhand. The characters are so vague in their communications with each other - at one point, Molly says to Tray, "It is still bad." And I had no idea what she was talking about! I was 80+ pages in! It was like one of those hour-long TV shows where the plot could be resolved by two people having a 30-second conversation. This whole book felt like it could've been a novella, 100 pages max. I also had a hard time with my suspension of disbelief that the four hikers wander into a tiny town and somehow find two LGBT teens to hang out with right away. At that point the representation felt incredibly forced. Come to think of it, how were these teenagers' parents fine with their kids going off and hanging out with four other teens they'd never met, let alone spending a night in a hotel with these strangers??? This is a trail town, hikers come into town all the time - it makes no sense.
Between some chapters, there are short interjections of the components of a song, which are also somehow stars in a constellation. I'm not sure what that was supposed to be about, because it didn't seem to connect to the story at all.
Overall, I guess all I can say is that I was disappointed.