A review by literarynessie
Tiny Pretty Things by Dhonielle Clayton, Sona Charaipotra
4.0
Initial thoughts: 3.5 stars? IDK. The heck?!
Final thoughts: While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, the depictions of race and the ballerina world felt realistic. The authors managed to capture a real-world topic without dumbing it down for their younger readers. It also has a Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl edge with a maturity that I can appreciate. I
I'm a huge fan of Pretty Little Liars (judge me all you want). I hate drama in real life, but I love suspense for some reason. I picked this up b/c the authors are women of color and I want to support diversity in books. That doesn't mean I'll be biased in my review.
I enjoyed the writing style. Both the authors went to a competitive graduate school and I think this was part of their final thesis projects. You can tell. The writing is strong and coherent and the authors did an excellent job at giving the multiple characters their own individual voices.
I really bonded with Gigi as a character because of personal experiences with bullying and feeling like I can't achieve the same goals because of how I looked. Bette was absolutely god-awful, but there are a lot of girls who for some reason like the mean girl because they hate girls like Gigi who are seemingly too nice and too innocent. This is also why I've struggled making friends as well. Like other people who read this book, I feel like there wasn't as much June to really see the point of her. However, I'm happy that she was in the book because it helped to balance out this sort of "good versus evil" distinction between Gigi and Bette. I would much rather have the gray area, and I think June represents that gray area in morality (if we're getting really deep about it).
My plan was to give this a solid 4 stars but then that ending. I couldn't process it. I felt like I got hit by a train. But after having time to process that ending, I will certainly give this book a solid 4 stars. I'd like to read the sequel but I'm not dying to read it immediately.
Final thoughts: While it may not be everyone's cup of tea, the depictions of race and the ballerina world felt realistic. The authors managed to capture a real-world topic without dumbing it down for their younger readers. It also has a Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl edge with a maturity that I can appreciate. I
I'm a huge fan of Pretty Little Liars (judge me all you want). I hate drama in real life, but I love suspense for some reason. I picked this up b/c the authors are women of color and I want to support diversity in books. That doesn't mean I'll be biased in my review.
I enjoyed the writing style. Both the authors went to a competitive graduate school and I think this was part of their final thesis projects. You can tell. The writing is strong and coherent and the authors did an excellent job at giving the multiple characters their own individual voices.
I really bonded with Gigi as a character because of personal experiences with bullying and feeling like I can't achieve the same goals because of how I looked. Bette was absolutely god-awful, but there are a lot of girls who for some reason like the mean girl because they hate girls like Gigi who are seemingly too nice and too innocent. This is also why I've struggled making friends as well. Like other people who read this book, I feel like there wasn't as much June to really see the point of her. However, I'm happy that she was in the book because it helped to balance out this sort of "good versus evil" distinction between Gigi and Bette. I would much rather have the gray area, and I think June represents that gray area in morality (if we're getting really deep about it).
My plan was to give this a solid 4 stars but then that ending. I couldn't process it. I felt like I got hit by a train. But after having time to process that ending, I will certainly give this book a solid 4 stars. I'd like to read the sequel but I'm not dying to read it immediately.