Review: Red at the Bone

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really need to learn that not every popular book of 2019 will be popular with me.

But alas. My little bookworm heart loves giving chances to every type of book to exist.

Moving along..

Firstly. The cover.

The cover -Patterned enough to look like a second rate blanket with rainbow swatches. Nothing impressive but ridiculously entertaining though. Hence why a star.

The summary -Is no different than any other YA book (again) as it talks about various stages of growing up, and recollections of past choices made in their lifetime (in the adults' life). So nothing special.

The characters -Gah, the characters. All of them seem to possess no minds and morals either, making them the worst yet to be ever read or thought about if ever an opinion was published.

Bad decisions haunt every corner, making me feel as if the characters were told not to think, plain and simple.

Gah.

Plus surprises keep popping up, like the discussion of LGBTQ relationships (I wish the author or some other reviewer mentioned this, plus they don't even say what she is identifying as -sexually?), cheating, reckless teenage behavior, no understanding of responsibilities with teenage pregnancy.

The racism and feminism, I'm well aware of, but the issues above are hardly talked about. They're mentioned, like some reminder on a page, and you move on automatically.

Like why not go into some more depth about these issues? I don't get it.

Plus there are way too many narratives going on, it gets hard to keep track about who's talking about what.

Aside from all this, there's nothing left or anything good to say about this novel. I fail to understand how this is a "memorable" novel, a "masterpiece" if everything is way too disjointed and disconnected.

So not a recommend. At all.

Until the next read,

-J.B

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