Rating: 3.5 Stars Themes: Short Story, Trauma Thoughts: I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This is a really short but still really impactful read. It is quite difficult to read the way in which the father terrorised the household and the child only being 4 and a half at the beginning makes it even more brutal but I appreciate this is the realities of life for many children. The end did leave it a little sadder but again it’s the reality for quite a few who survive these kinds of childhoods. Favourite Quote: “Aunt M tells me nobody realised what was happening. Nobody could know what was going on. People are suspicious, but people are unable to comprehend that an abnormal situation could exist. People do not want to become involved. People decided to ignore it.”
Rating: 4 Stars Themes: Non-Fiction, LGBTQ+ Thoughts: 23 Queer individuals span all the way back to 218 with Elagabalus to some people who are still alive. I liked that there was the Queer and There bits in the Introduction to address the attitudes towards Queer people before colonialism spread Christian values across the globe which is something not everyone knows or remembers. The images on the initial page for each person was quite well done and I could guess some from the cover alone. Having a tl;dr on that same page was novel to me but since it’s marketed at teens (which I didn’t realise until I’d already started) it does make sense as a way to speak to them on their level. The text itself is also handled in a way that speaks to teens without infantalising the topic and I’m sure this could be a great book to help Queer teens feel seen/represented in history which the classes skip. Favourite Quote: “Queer history is world history: the stories of every culture from every era. It is ...