A review by onetruenorth
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

5.0

this book was an absolute revelation and had me marking off lines that made me go “wow” from the beginning right until the very end. with lines like “womanhood is radical enough for anyone who claims it,” how could i not? i felt empowered and proud to be a woman as i read this, and it also inspired me to do my own research on the real history of america, and the role that women played in it that we never get to hear about. i also think that juliet was a perfect example of how somebody can be uneducated on certain topics (for example, she didn’t know much about being transgender) but open to learn and immediately respectful once she learned the information. (as opposed to, say, harlowe. she proclaimed that she was all about feminism, but her feminism didn’t apply to women who weren’t white, or whose birth sex wasn’t female. she proclaimed that it was important to check one’s white privileged, and yet never listened when POC corrected her. when called out, she only acknowledged the error of her ways later on - and even then, she made the conversation about her guilt. she was always out here making her friends feel awkward and ashamed with her racism and then crying about it?? cba)
i also think that we all fell a little bit in love with kira (hello?? hot biker librarian who makes chocolate chip cookies?? i am waiting for her to enter my life right the fuck now)
this book was an awakening and a revolution and left me hungry for more.