Emma’s Comments (group member since Oct 05, 2020)

Emma’s comments from the YHS Class of 2023 group.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I loved Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. It is by far the best book I have read this year. I would give this book five out of five stars. The genre of the book is historical fiction. The book starts with the story of two young women in Ghana during the 18th century. The two women, Effia and Esi, tell the story of two different sides of history on the Gold Coast. Effia is married to a British man, allowing her to live in the castle on Cape Coast, while Esi is imprisoned underneath the castle to be sold into slavery. As the book progresses, the story switches points of view from people from each family tree, allowing us to see how the lives of Effia and Esi impacted their descendants. Effie's descendants bring us through the centuries of chaos on the Gold Coast caused by internal warfare and British colonization. Esi’s descendants bring us through the centuries in America. Her and her descendants’ stories express the atrocities against Africans and African-Americans throughout American history.
I loved this book, but specifically how Gyasi wrote it. She never allowed the story to become slow or uneventful. She allowed room in her story to have both happy, sad, and angering moments keeping the stories alive. I loved how she always developed the characters as the book progressed, allowing you to know the characters. I really enjoyed how she branched off with two family trees, allowing you to hear and see how past characters had impacted the family whether it be good or bad. One thing I found difficult about reading the book was understanding all of the connections in the beginning. Gyasi starts off by having many different characters introduced, which I found made it difficult to have a strong understanding of what was happening. I found myself going back and to look at the family tree in order to see which characters were connected to another.
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction and learning about the history of Africans in America and on the Gold Coast. In my opinion, someone who reads this book needs to be mature enough to handle graphic depictions of the mistreatment of the people of Africa and African descent throughout history. Overall, I think this would be a valuable story for everyone to read but would not recommend it to someone who does not enjoy reading heavy topics or reading stories with multiple changes in point of view.



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Homegoing

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. I would give this book four out of five stars. The genre of the book is fiction, romantic comedy, and LGBTQ+ literature. The book is about two young men falling in love. The two men are the son of the president of the United States, Alex, and the Prince of Wales, Henry. The book starts with a focus on Alex, his sister, and a close friend of the family's involvement in their mom's campaign. The group is called the White House Trio and they have a lot of responsibility in their mom's re-election campaign. The drama starts when an incident between Alex and Henry occurs at a royal wedding while they still view each other as enemies. Both countries decided they should cover up the incident by staging a friendship that causes the boys to fall for each other.

One thing I loved about this book was how McQuiston developed and wrote the characters. She made each character have an internal battle that they need to resolve whether it be their place in their family, what they want to do with their life, or who they love. I thought she did an incredible job writing the characters in a way that allows the reader to relate to their personalities or their struggles. I also really enjoyed how she kept the book moving by adding different challenges or new events for the characters rather than dragging out the same events. For me, I need that in a book because I can easily get bored when the author draws out a chapter too long.

I also really enjoyed the various struggles the author tried to tackle within the book. I think the saddest but most interesting struggle was the battle that Henry had to fight within his own family to be able to love whom he wanted. The book showed how he had to grow into who he truly was and stand up for himself in a way that he never had done previously. Although not everyone has to stand up to a queen of a country, and it may not be about who they love, everyone at some point in their lives will have to stand up for themselves in their family so they can become their true selves.

There was not much about this book that I did not like but I do wish we had learned more about how some of the other characters interacted with each other. Throughout the chapters, McQuiston hinted at some characters having things happen between them or in their lives that would have been interesting to follow.

I would recommend this book to fans of fiction and romantic comedies. I think it is a very serious coming of age book with a light-hearted approach that would speak to many people. I think this book would be good for someone that doesn't love super dark topics but enjoys reading books that cover serious challenges that characters have to overcome. I would not recommend this book to someone who loves action or complex storylines. Overall I think this would be a good book for most people to read.



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Neal Shusterman

My rating: 3 out of 5

I enjoyed The Toll by Neal Shusterman but did not love it. I would give it a three out of five. The genre of the book is science fiction. It takes place in a dystopian future where everyone is immortal and the only way to die is to be gleaned by a scythe. The book features more than five character's stories that end up being intertwined. It gives a strong and interesting ending for all of the characters and the series itself. It picks up after a large accident that results in thousands of deaths most of which are scythes. Two of the most important young scythes have disappeared. The Tonist's have a new prophet who is on a quest to help the world. The Tonists are a group of people who believe in the ideals of the mortal world. The thunderhead has stopped talking to the world leaving people in panic and the scythedom has a new leader. Whether or not the leader is good or bad will be up to you.

I thought this book was good because it kept the story going and the author continued to develop the characters introduced in the first two books. I really like how he wrote in a character that made you rethink society's normative on gender. I think he did a really good job of making his characters relatable for everyone. I don't mean that you could relate with every character but I think there is at least one character everyone can relate to. My personal favorite was Scythe Anastasia whose real name is Citra. She was a strong and courageous woman who was a strong leader. I also thought Shusterman did an incredible job making me think about the different ways our society functions and acts. He made me think about how things could be different in a good or bad way. I didn't like how complex the character's stories got when they started to mix together. I felt a little lost at some points in the book because there wasn't any background for some of the events until later in the book. I also loved but hated how he ended the book. He gave it a really nice ending but not one I expected which is what I loved about it. I would have ended it differently which I think is part of the reason why I didn't love the ending, especially for certain characters.

I think this book would be good for fans of science fiction and dystopian. I also would recommend it to people who enjoy complex storylines. I would not recommend this to someone who needs things to be super clear throughout the whole book. I really think this would be a good book for someone who likes to think about ways society could be different and what it could look like in the future.