A review by chrissireads
Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin
3.0
3.5 Stars
I have had Symptoms of Being Human on my radar for a while now. It won’t be a surprise to anyone to read that I like reading diverse books. I love to see all kinds of people represented in literature, especially YA literature, where I feel it is incredibly important to portray a range of individuals. I thought Symptoms of Being Human was a decent read. I believe it does suffer from a slow pace though. Despite it being a short read, I didn’t whizz through the book.
The story centres around Riley, who is gender fluid, the author describes gender fluid as sometimes identifying as female and sometimes male. What I thought was interesting about this book, was that the author never tells us which gender Riley was assigned as at birth. At first I was a little frustrated that I didn’t know, but then I considered that the author is giving readers the message that it really doesn’t matter what gender you were assigned at birth, especially if you identify as gender fluid. I appreciated that message, but I do think it meant that some conversations were skirted around and never really addressed. However, I totally appreciated that the author just gets us to see Riley as a human. Riley’s gender shouldn’t matter.
I found it easy to like Riley. I loved that there was a bit of blogging involved. I enjoy reading books that are so current. I also felt that Riley’s blog posts were informative to how Riley felt about gender fluidity. I feel that Symptoms of Being Human is a great book to learn about gender fluidity and begin to understand how it feels for those that identify as gender fluid.
I have had Symptoms of Being Human on my radar for a while now. It won’t be a surprise to anyone to read that I like reading diverse books. I love to see all kinds of people represented in literature, especially YA literature, where I feel it is incredibly important to portray a range of individuals. I thought Symptoms of Being Human was a decent read. I believe it does suffer from a slow pace though. Despite it being a short read, I didn’t whizz through the book.
The story centres around Riley, who is gender fluid, the author describes gender fluid as sometimes identifying as female and sometimes male. What I thought was interesting about this book, was that the author never tells us which gender Riley was assigned as at birth. At first I was a little frustrated that I didn’t know, but then I considered that the author is giving readers the message that it really doesn’t matter what gender you were assigned at birth, especially if you identify as gender fluid. I appreciated that message, but I do think it meant that some conversations were skirted around and never really addressed. However, I totally appreciated that the author just gets us to see Riley as a human. Riley’s gender shouldn’t matter.
I found it easy to like Riley. I loved that there was a bit of blogging involved. I enjoy reading books that are so current. I also felt that Riley’s blog posts were informative to how Riley felt about gender fluidity. I feel that Symptoms of Being Human is a great book to learn about gender fluidity and begin to understand how it feels for those that identify as gender fluid.