A review by henrygravesprince
Second Song by Edie Danford

emotional hopeful reflective 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

3.75

I was surprised to, for the most part, really enjoy this book. It’s sweet. Some assorted thoughts:
  1. I really enjoy the writing style for about 75% of this book, which, in my opinion, is a win. First-person romances usually don’t work well for me, especially with alternating points of view, because a lot of authors struggle to incorporate a natural-sounding character voice to prose (let alone two of them). There are still parts where it does feel awkward and stumbly to me — particularly in sex scenes, but that may just be a hang-up I have on first person that won’t change.
  2. I’m glad that Sage’s acquired disabilities aren’t framed as inherently negative or life-ruining. The author did a decent job at showing how many people will assume it is without sending the message to disabled people that our lives are ruined or less than. I don’t know if the author has personal experience with acquired disability or disability in general, but the writing generally doesn’t have glaring moments of feeling voyeuristic towards disabled experiences, which makes me happy.
  3. I did raise my eyebrows at the choice to have Sage use a Note app in his phone for text-to-speech services rather than an AAC device or AAC app made for that purpose, but this may be a blindspot of my own as someone who is more experienced with lifelong disabilities than acquired ones — I can definitely see the line of thinking that someone who isn’t ingrained in disabled communities who becomes disabled might instead resort to that and not be aware that there are apps made for AAC, so I wonder if this actually is common with people who have to use text to speech due to acquired disability, or if that was an assumption on the author’s part.
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