Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Darius the Great Is Not Okay

This book has a very heartfelt story and lovable characters, but some of the storytelling was a bit too young for me (it is a YA book, so I don't blame the author at all). Extremely heartwarming!

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annakh16's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Emotional and reflective - a lovely YA book.

This combines a lot of topics with vivid description - family relationships, friendship, living with depression as a young person, and the culture and history of Iran (I agree with most people here that the discussions on food were a highlight). Darius being both an insider and outsider to Iranian life made this a great learning opportunity as a reader, and really helped it come to life.

Darius is well-written and likeable, and there is a good mix of character introspection and interactions with others. The Star Trek references in his language really helped shape his character, and actually weren’t overdone, which I find to be rare with things like this.

I underrated the dynamic between Darius and his father for most of the book - not that it was badly done at all, but the author’s afterword - that this is about loving someone with depression, while also having depression yourself - really made me realise how meaningful it was. I thought their final conversation was great, though to me, Steven is not quite off the hook just yet. Very interested to see how this develops in the sequel.

And Sohrab and Darius - I mean they’re just so sweet. „Your place was empty“ <3

Good audio narration too. A quiet and introspective book, with lots to learn (for me personally) - would recommend it for that!

Content Warnings

_fathimanourin1234_'s review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad fast-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? Yes

5.0

This book is my favourite. The main character Darius is my favourite.
I could connect with Darius in many moments. The feelings, thoughts and his way of thinking, over thinking, everything I could relate to him in many situations. I had criticised him in some situations too.
As a whole this book is my another favourite of all time.

Content Warnings

thegeekgirl's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative lighthearted reflective sad medium-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

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nerdsbianhokie's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful

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 don't know if any book had made me cry three times, but this one did and I love it.

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archiveofrasa'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? Yes

4.25

read this in a day. pleased to say it made me cry on multiple occasions.

I may have expected a bit too much from this book, but I still got a lot out of it! Darius was such a sweet character to follow and the relationships the book explores were so interesting, especially that of him and his dad. very tender, absolutely love brown boys figuring out their daddy issues properly lmao

Darius' relationship with Sohrab was honestly what drove me through the book, it was also so sweet and tender and emotional. I wasn't sure where it was going to go but I think the bittersweet ending felt very fitting for them. the subtleties on Darius' queerness were definitely not lost on me and I enjoyed the subtext (well, you can argue it's text considering the sequel lol), and while I'm not sure if we get to see Sohrab in the sequel, but I hope we do!!

and oh lord, the trip to Iran – I'm Bengali, so not quite the same type of Asian, but there were so many similarities, it dawned on me that there is a reason why Persian culture is so similar to how my Bengali family works haha. the feeling of not belonging to either culture you're a part of really resonated with me and I get why a lot of people who are children of immigrants loved this, I did too. no other book put the feeling quite so well, but I'm glad this was one of the few books that have.

I think I expected a less-YA writing style, but then again, that's entirely on me. There was a lot of repetition with Darius' narrative but I appreciate that Khorram's style choice does reflect the repetitiveness of depression and adds to the subtly of Darius' mental illness. the author wanted to weave it into the narrative without being obvious and I think he did a good job!

Darius is also a very quiet and subtle book for a YA contemporary – not a lot happens but I quite enjoyed it for that, we don't always need very dramatic stories about our identity for them to be good.

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traceyanderson's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring fast-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? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

nikia4's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

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