Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

3 reviews

carolined314's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

A spec fic meditation on growing up, loss, love, ICE, illegal detainment, racism, and more. With dancing cacti.
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horizonous's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This is a difficult one to rate because it's almost like each half of the story belongs to an entirely different book:

  1. First half: YA hard-hitting contemporary with a hint of magical realism and a great portrayal of loving, supportive friends and family even through the toughest of times (Rating: 3-3.5 stars)
  2. Second half: Close encounters of the third kind meets X-files conspiracy theories except their real but it all completely derailed the longer it went on (Rating: 2-2.5 stars)

There are also two very different writing styles:

  1. Very matter of fact with quite a bit of swearing - personally I don't think swearing is worth mentioning in my content notes (as long as it isn't excessively disrupting) but if you mind at all especially from teenagers, this will probably bother you
  2. Poetic, moving descriptions especially in connection to the magical realism elements
  3. Also in regards to the writing: In the beginning everything read very young.. I was really taken aback when I read how Sia got into her car because I thought she was at a max maybe 14 years old, but no.. the teenagers are all around 17 and 18 years old.

So, overall this was a truly a mixed bag for me.. the more into the second half I got the more I wanted it to end but I can't dismiss that I really liked the YA contemporary elements including (most of) the characters, their dynamics (minus the romance, I honestly didn't really get its fast development and would have preferred a slower approach and there are way too many sex scenes - I mean I get that I'm not the target audience as an adult but still.. I felt weird reading them and I'm sure I would have as well when I was younger) and even their disagreements because they felt real for teenagers.

P.S.: God do I hope the day comes when Harry Potter isn't referenced anymore to give (younger) characters personality or explain certain dynamics 🤐
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oliverreeds's review

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

4.0

the writing style in this book is impeccable, and the characters are incredibly believable. this author writes teenagers so well and knows how to breathe life into her narratives. her writing reminds of benjamin alire saenz specifically in the way that she weaves in her families ideas of the world in short chapters and guides her readers to view certain characters and certain issues in a productive way. these are the parts of this book that i greatly enjoyed, and i would not have guessed it was this authors first novel. sometimes, however, the dialogue and scenes would be split in odd places– almost like the author didn't know what she wanted to write. it was honestly distracting and annoying to have the scenes split up like this when they would have workd better as cohesive dialogue trains that moved from one person to the next and one topic to the next. the chapter breaks just weren't necessary. i also felt like this was two separate books. the first section is all about sia's life, her mother, her grief, and her relationships, and then like 200 pages in there are just... aliens? and the aliens aren't a spoiler because they're on the back of the book, but they aren't actually adressed for a while, which was just weird for me. this also made the climax of the book move incredibly quickly in a way that i don't think worked for this particular novel. the ending was so fast that i didn't feel like there was any resolution until
everything was kind of back to normal
. the only reason i rated this book so highly is because the author is just honestly incredible at writing. i was willing to deal with the weird plot just to know more about these characters, just to live in the mythology of sia's life and learn the way she sees the world. would i read this book again? probably not. am i glad i read it? yes. 100% because even though some of the metaphors were a little heavy-handed, i genuinely think this is a well-crafted book that provides SO much information and characterization of the hardships faced and culture cultivated by people of color even though our society likes to believe everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and that any culture other than that of white people is bland in comparison. 
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