skye_era_books's reviews
368 reviews

FUCK dude. I have never cried from a book for so many different reasons. No one talk to me I’m grieving. 

I feel weird rating this, so I’m not going to. This was extremely informative and helped me better understand the differences between racism, racist, and antiracist. 

I think this is important for everyone to read, as Ibram states that we all have biases that are engrained into us from an early age due to systemic racism. 

I also thought the metaphor of racism being just like cancer was helpful in my understanding of it. It started with some little cells and rapidly grew from there.

I’d also like to note that I have had the physical book since it came out in 2019, but I find it easier to digest nonfiction books through audio, so I chose that format. The audio is slightly different from the 2019 hardcover, and the author discusses the changes he made throughout the book in the audio. He explains that he is always continuing to learn and grow, so some descriptions or wording was changed based on his new knowledge and changing of his biases.

so glad I didn’t back cover this, i needed this book. also the political aspect felt very timely

This was my first book by Anna and certainly won’t be my last! I just loved the characters - AND the character growth for Jackson in particular was fantastic. Learning about racism as a privileged white man in your mid-20s is difficult but NEEDED. He really stepped up and showed Oleander that he would put in the work 👏 I also love that Oleander is fat, brown, and bisexual - representation was immaculate! Also having an FMC that has survived a near r*pe and sexual assault and hearing her feelings and thoughts on it made me feel very seen and validated as someone who has also survived both of these things. 

The only reason I dropped this down to 4.25 is because I feel like there was… too much sex? Idk I just wish there were maybe 2-3 less sex scenes? I wanted more of the STORY. 

I am UGLY CRYING over the last 50ish pages holy shit. I loved this book so much, especially learning about Sài Gòn and Vietnam and their history. 

For some reason I didn’t feel the romantic love connection between Vivi and Lan which is why I bumped the rating down a bit. I loved them together, but maybe just as best friends? I’m not sure why 😭

This was very cute and not what I expected (I didn’t back cover it lol) but overall good! No real review oops

Okay… I only got 7% into this ARC (thank you to the author, I apologize pls don’t read this DNF explanation) but this book already pissed me off way too many times:

I was very excited to read this but I can’t do it if the rest of the book is anything like the first 7%

If there’s a meddling grandma, sign me up. 

Wow I’m so glad I switched to the audio, this was fantastic. So raw and emotional.