The Knife of Never Letting Go

And I think how hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, too, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare to the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?

— A very rich book brimming with brilliant ideas like identity, the power of choices, the nature of truth, and SO MUCH MORE. Not a type of book I usually read but WOW did this blow me away! Really impressive!

This was okay. I was invested, it's a great study of “make everything terrible and then make it worse” and upping stakes and there was definitely lots of effective tension and action throughout, not to mention the voice and premise are absolutely unique.

But IDK. As a trans person, I'm not really an enormous fan of stories whose entire premise relies on how different boys are from girls and vice versa. There were some things I certainly appreciated about this book, but the gender stuff kind of killed it for me. YMMV.