Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - We Ride Upon Sticks

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

29 reviews

cruel's review against another edition

funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

mel boucher i'm sorry i was not your author

that ending sucked so bad that it took what would've been a 3 all the way done to a 1 - my biggest problem with it being

the weird justification of mel's relationship with coach mullins

. it seemed like it was going to tackle a lot of issues but instead just brushed over them and went with a very shallow, liberal feminist message.

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faeriefangss's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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3mmers's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed 92% of We Ride Upon Sticks and that’s mostly because I approached it with the right attitude: it ain’t that deep.

This novel is best appreciated as a lighthearted and goofy romp down memory lane. The marketing blurb compares it to Stranger Things and that’s an absolutely delusional comparison; both works trade in 80s nostalgia, but that’s where the similarity ends. It’s better to think of We Ride Upon Sticks as a teen comedy with a faintly supernatural flavour, like Ouran High School Host Club, Derry Girls, or in my mind especially, British comedy St. Trinian’s. Everything, from the supernatural to the interpersonal, is to be jeered and mocked with 2 kool 4 skool teen swagger. And that’s a lot of fun.

I enjoyed the book on its own terms — it’s a genuinely heartwarming picture of teenage friendship and rebellion, and I did indeed laugh at the jokes — but I also liked it on a meta-level. It’s nice to have an unapologetically queer and feminist high school comedy without it being bogged down by mawkish emotional problems. I know I was once a teen constantly beleaguered by mawkish emotional problems (twas the era of Fall Out Boy and 21 Pilots), but as an adult that isn’t the part I look back on fondly. In other words, the art style of Heartstopper is very cute, but manzo do they have problems. We Ride Upon Sticks nails how irony-poisoned and allergic to sincerity we were as teens, and for some reason that meant a lot more to me than teenagers working through their emotions using healthy coping mechanisms and clear communication.

The only thing that really bugged me in the majority of the novel was the unceasing reoccurring jokes. Quan Barry loves a running gag. They come back so constantly and with such absurd regularity that it came back around to being funny for me (through I think a less easily entertained reader might find it simply unendurable instead). But that’s the majority of the book, and I want to move on to the 8% of We Ride Upon Sticks that I didn’t enjoy: the ending.

An unavoidably huge part of this novel is that it is socially conscious. It wants to do right by the feminist, queer, and BIPOC struggles of 80s teens and it wants you to know in the clearest most thoroughly explained language possible. Some readers might find this sanctimonious, but I thought it was fine. One weakness of this approach, however, is that it is always very obvious when the author fumbles the bag.

In this case the bag is the character Corey Young, formerly ‘boy’ Corey.

Spoilers for the ending of We Ride Upon Sticks.

The novel ends with a flash forward to our characters reuniting as middle-aged women so we can see what happened to the Danvers Falcons in adult life. I liked the idea and I liked the fact that for more of the characters their formative years continued well after high school graduation. The one I didn’t like was boy Corey. In the intervening years she has come out and fully transitioned. Now, I know a lot of trans people in real life and also I understand obvious foreshadowing, so I saw this coming a mile away. It was not a Reveal. Problem is the book so desperately wanted to treat it as one. We get this super long fake out scene before the book reveals that Corey is a woman now! Surprise! Were you expecting a man! I found that kinda tasteless.

What bothered me more is that while we hear a lot about the team’s anxiety about reuniting with Corey — will they say the wrong thing? Did they made transition harder for her? — we never hear anything from Corey herself. I’d put this down to a lack of authorial confidence. It feels like Barry is a lot more familiar with how it feels to be friends with a trans woman than how it feels to be a trans woman. That’s not a problem in and of itself, but I felt we needed to hear Corey’s side of things too. Is she excited to reunite with all her friends as her authentic gender? Is she apprehensive about spending time with people who only knew her pre-transition? This book is all about centring marginalized perspectives, that’s why it spends so much time explicitly calling out the ways the characters themselves fails at this — that it was disappointing for it to end by cantering a bunch of cis women’s anxiety about being accepting enough over a trans woman’s thoughts. Since this is what the book is All About, the comparatively small detail has an out-sized impact.

I already didn’t like the specifics of the reveal, and its general effect didn’t work either. It is one of a whole bunch of fake outs and twists in the flash forward section. There are so many that it fucks up the pacing, since the story is now being told essentially in reverse to accommodate the dramatic reveals. It ends on the note that the Danvers Falcons’ success was never the work of the devil, the idea of supernatural intervention just gave a bunch of teenagers the excuse they needed to work hard and band together. I thought that was really sweet, but it takes so long to get there that I was just ready for it to be over.

On balance, this is a recommend from me. I like that it’s fun and lighthearted, but it is also a queer novel that isn’t afraid to be ironic and crass. I enjoyed the absurd 80s references and the overplayed jokes. I liked that sports fiction can be for girls sometimes!

Let the hairspray wash over you and don’t worry about what the long term effects of all those CFCs will end up being.

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luckykosmos's review

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funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I adore stories about messy teen girls being weird and taking on the world, and this was that without question. I loved watching them grow and support one another and lean into the weirdness of their situation. Barry's prose is sharp and snappy and as much part of the setting and the cast, looping you in as one of the team and part of their psychic connection.

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concertconfetti's review against another edition

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dark funny inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Amazing. I rarely hear stories about high school that resonate with me and this certainly did. As one of the weird jocks - swimmers and the field hockey team are sisters in weird sports - this reminded me of what it felt like to be an awkward teen who's neurodivergent and queer but doesn't have the language yet. I wish I'd had teammates like the Danvers 89 field hockey team. It was sweet and harsh and difficult and full of hunger and love and community actualization. Knocked a half a point for occasional clunkiness of comparisons between 2019 and 1989.

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elderwoodreads's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is the most unique book I read this year, possibly ever. Bray's writing style was a little odd at first but once I was in I was in. Everything I have found listed as cons by other readers were pros to me. I loved the plural first person narration, the slow burn, and the overly verbose descriptions. Please give this one a try.

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