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A review by simonlorden
Sweet Girls and Bluebirds by Caroline Sophia Hamel
3.5
I received an ARC from the author through NetGalley, and this is my voluntary and honest review.
I was immediately drawn in by that beautiful cover. The soft colors, the visibly nonbinary character, the cat?? It's beautiful, and the title itself is very soft too. This is overall a feel-good queer romantic story with an (almost) entirely queer cast, so I think that cover suits it very much.
You might find the book a bit frustrating to read if you're older than 16, though. Sophia is SUCH a teenager, sometimes in an awkward way. Most of her personality is being trans and being a girl, which happens when you've just recently come out and still figuring out your identity. She says dumb things, she curses for no reason, she thinks sexist gender roles are okay as long as she's the girl in the equation, etc.
Moreover, the random emojis in the text and the little explanations about slurs and pronouns quite literally brought me out of the story. A lot of this book makes more sense if you're reading it as a journal Sophia is writing, but that doesn't quite fit either, because the present-time narration of daily events doesn't match the journal style. So, it's definitely unconventional.
The half dozen author notes at both the beginning and the end felt a bit excessive, too. Overall, this felt as much like an education booklet/Trans 101 than a romantic story.
I was immediately drawn in by that beautiful cover. The soft colors, the visibly nonbinary character, the cat?? It's beautiful, and the title itself is very soft too. This is overall a feel-good queer romantic story with an (almost) entirely queer cast, so I think that cover suits it very much.
You might find the book a bit frustrating to read if you're older than 16, though. Sophia is SUCH a teenager, sometimes in an awkward way. Most of her personality is being trans and being a girl, which happens when you've just recently come out and still figuring out your identity. She says dumb things, she curses for no reason, she thinks sexist gender roles are okay as long as she's the girl in the equation, etc.
Moreover, the random emojis in the text and the little explanations about slurs and pronouns quite literally brought me out of the story. A lot of this book makes more sense if you're reading it as a journal Sophia is writing, but that doesn't quite fit either, because the present-time narration of daily events doesn't match the journal style. So, it's definitely unconventional.
The half dozen author notes at both the beginning and the end felt a bit excessive, too. Overall, this felt as much like an education booklet/Trans 101 than a romantic story.