As soon as I heard that Oluo was releasing another book I immediately sought out a copy. I couldn’t wait until it was released so sought out a galley ASAP.* I will buy a copy as well, because she’s wonderful. My response is definitely messy, but it’s because she makes me think so much about so many things and I just sort of try to regurgitate all of my thoughts at the same time instead of cohesively sharing them.
First, a diatribe about the early reviews I saw on Goodreads:Â If you ever needed a reason to read books like this (you don’t), you should take a look at the reviews for this one on Goodreads. Not only have a lot of the 1- and 2-star reviews totally misunderstood the entire book, they have attempted to explain their ratings with the thinnest of reasons that frankly annoyed the shit out of me. Not only are there the men (god fearing Christians if they’re to be believed) who completely missed that Oluo isn’t saying all white men are mediocre, just that the racist-ass systems built by white men reward the most mediocre of them, they straight up appear not to have even read the book, let alone tried to understand it.
I honestly don’t know how people exist without being paranoid ALL THE TIME. When I first said yes to this after the publicist reached out, it was like 95% because the author’s first name was Geoff and 5% because the subject was interesting. And then I found myself completely absorbed with this book.*
Talk about a change of pace! I kept putting this off when it came up from my library. I was loving all the MM romance and young adult books I’ve been reading, but I finally just said okay. It was 100% worth it to slow down and take the village life pace to read this and not rush through it like some of the high-intensity romances I’ve read recently.
You didn’t really think I was going to go more than five books without reading an Annabeth Albert book, did you? Okay noob. (I’ve got jokes.) I actually got this from the library (digitally of course) before I started the last two books, but since those were both ARCs with early July publish dates I wanted to make sure I got to them first and this was my reward for finishing them.
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this. When the publisher reached out to me about an ARC I liked the synopsis and loved the fact Lepionka co-hosts a podcast called “Unlikeable Female Characters”, so said sure why not.*