Dreamland Burning

pros:

- rowan is a really good protagonist!!! i really like her character. she's smart, charming, and is a very believable teenager. her friendship with james is also really nice and i always appreciate characters in fiction that are like me.
- rowan's parents are also hella cool lol.
- the plot was really engaging and fun and i honestly was freaking out at the end of that one chapter when i thought joseph was going to get hurt.
- JOSEPH!!!! i loved joseph and ruby so much they were so delightful and my heart was going out for them i honestly wish they had their own pov chapters
- ruby is a little rascal and well-written annoying child characters are always appreciated
- great commentary on being biracial and how that coincides with visual oppression/personal self-discovery
- in general the pacing of this book was really good, i finished it in like three hours and i was engaged the entire time

cons:
- i am not sure if the author is mixed but i am making the assumption that she is white. i am a little tired of reading books by white authors on poc, especially black, issues. latham did a really good job with this book but i definitely would have been more comfortable had this been written by a different author.
- on that note, the amount of times some variation of the n-word was used lmaooooooooo if the author is indeed white.... ok
- i am not really that sold or happy with the whole “vernon is actually black” twist idk it works and its supposed to tie into geneva's whole “this is a black man” mystery but it feels a little rushed
- also for that matter, i liked will a lot and was happy with him as a character overall but i'm tired of white povs in books surrounding racial issues. i don't care if will was one of the “good whites”. i really couldn't tell if the author wanted us to think that will was bigoted at the start or he was always like a good kid or something i think him being half-native was supposed to make us feel bad for the clarence situation but i felt like... idk my dudes the only reason he was nice to ruby was because she reminded him of his dead sister so that's a hmmmmmmmmm
- also the whole ordeal with will's dad like Yes we get it there are Good Whites this good white married an Indian woman what a good White like i know not all white people were kkk members in 1921 and there probably were a lot of people who sympathized with black people at the time but it's a little annoying considering that it comes off as being white savior-y especially near the end of the novel
- i liked arvin and rowan's relationship but it's probably the most underdeveloped part of the book. i think the author was trying to tie arvin's death into current racial issues and develop rowan as a character but it just felt completely disconnected from the rest of the book, especially with the very shoe-horned “arvin's aunt's friend is ruby goodhope's daughter” reveal. the book needed to be longer if it wanted to work in a plotline like that.
- i did really like this book i swear but i also feel like... hmmm... the usage of indigenous people in this book... not the best