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A review by biblioberry
Every Variable of Us by Charles A. Bush
4.0
I received an advanced reader's copy of this audiobook for review purposes from the publisher from netgalley. this in no way influences my review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
every variable of us follows lex, an average student who plans to get out of her impoverished neighbourhood on a basketball scholarship as a gang shooting renders her gravely injured, thus derailing her life. lex loses all hope and resigns herself to the life expected of another unfortunate Black teenage girl born into a poverty-stricken neighbourhood until she meets aamani, who strikes up a tentative friendship that grows into a romance with her and convinces her to join the school STEM team. they get off to a rocky start and it feels almost impossible to root for the redemption of their relationship: they first meet when aamani reports lex for trying to steal from her father's convenience store, lex's friends have it out for aamani, their relationship begins with lex throwing all kinds of slurs at her; but it progresses beautifully into a tender, passionate romance.
this book does a great job with the romance and in exploring friendships (toxic and otherwise), racism/anti-Blackness (I will get to the desi representation in a second), classism and ableism. it's very hopeful and almost inspiring as lex slowly picks up the pieces of her crumbling life to build a future for herself. the stem team was adorable and i may not be the biggest fan of science but the science metaphors were *chef's kiss*
the writing style is super quick and easy to follow, if a little awkward and stilted at times. case in point: curry food? not a thing. there are a million better ways to describe skin tone without reference to hazelnut or caramel chocolate (which also "almost goes pale" at one point), and aamani's eyes are actually (i literally cannot make this up) described as "brown spheres". do not even get me started on how awkward some of the hindi dialogue was:// but those were mostly minor issues pertaining to like 6-7 lines across the book at most and since this is a debut i think that's excusable:')
oh and a couple of issues on the indian hindu representation i had as an indian from a hindu family:: some of it seemed all over the place and very generalized regarding indian culture - like how aamani has a bangali surname (chakrabarti) but speaks hindi at home and says she's from "the home of bollywood" and says something about all dance and club bollywood sounding the same:// they're pretty tiny issues though and other than that id say the representation was pretty well done:D
anyway so overall? this was emotional, cute and hella inspiring, id definitely recommend:)
every variable of us follows lex, an average student who plans to get out of her impoverished neighbourhood on a basketball scholarship as a gang shooting renders her gravely injured, thus derailing her life. lex loses all hope and resigns herself to the life expected of another unfortunate Black teenage girl born into a poverty-stricken neighbourhood until she meets aamani, who strikes up a tentative friendship that grows into a romance with her and convinces her to join the school STEM team. they get off to a rocky start and it feels almost impossible to root for the redemption of their relationship: they first meet when aamani reports lex for trying to steal from her father's convenience store, lex's friends have it out for aamani, their relationship begins with lex throwing all kinds of slurs at her; but it progresses beautifully into a tender, passionate romance.
this book does a great job with the romance and in exploring friendships (toxic and otherwise), racism/anti-Blackness (I will get to the desi representation in a second), classism and ableism. it's very hopeful and almost inspiring as lex slowly picks up the pieces of her crumbling life to build a future for herself. the stem team was adorable and i may not be the biggest fan of science but the science metaphors were *chef's kiss*
the writing style is super quick and easy to follow, if a little awkward and stilted at times. case in point: curry food? not a thing. there are a million better ways to describe skin tone without reference to hazelnut or caramel chocolate (which also "almost goes pale" at one point), and aamani's eyes are actually (i literally cannot make this up) described as "brown spheres". do not even get me started on how awkward some of the hindi dialogue was:// but those were mostly minor issues pertaining to like 6-7 lines across the book at most and since this is a debut i think that's excusable:')
oh and a couple of issues on the indian hindu representation i had as an indian from a hindu family:: some of it seemed all over the place and very generalized regarding indian culture - like how aamani has a bangali surname (chakrabarti) but speaks hindi at home and says she's from "the home of bollywood" and says something about all dance and club bollywood sounding the same:// they're pretty tiny issues though and other than that id say the representation was pretty well done:D
anyway so overall? this was emotional, cute and hella inspiring, id definitely recommend:)