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Has anyone read this book yet? I'd love to discuss it.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD INCLUDING IN COMMENTS.
There is no way to talk about this book meaningfully without completely spoiling it since it's a huge mystery where all the answers are at the very end of the story.
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I found this book frankly horrible and somewhat unhinged. As of July 2023, it has an average rating of 4.1 on Goodreads.
As details about Vivek are uncovered, I was fine with gay (or bisexual) and feminine. But as soon as the author talks about dresses and makeup, I was like, here we go. I know we're going to go there. And we did. He is non-binary, though he isn't called that specifically; he has a feminine name and wants to be referred to as he, she, or they. Woe is the genderless child!
I absolutely hate the scene of Vivek's death in the market. So, everybody thinks he was lynched for being a feminine man, but the truth is that he simply tripped and hit his head on the concrete? Osita is keeping this to himself why exactly? Just to make a martyr story? I don't understand. I am not a parent, but I'd rather know that my child died from an accident rather than beaten to death by an angry mob.
Also, Vivek was sick when he was young. I felt that the book implied that identifying as NB (in secret) healed him from his seizures and whatever mental condition he is implied to have (my guess is schizophrenia). His friends tell his mom (after his death) that wearing dresses and makeup made him less sick, that's why he looked healthier in the months before his death. Umm... OK... didn't know the cure for seizures and schizophrenia was wearing your friend's mom's old dresses and eyeliner...
I'm fine with some sex in my popular media, it's a part of life after all, but why was there so much of it here? All of these kids were just fucking each other, it was very creepy and strange. I hated the scene where Osita and Juju were in Juju's bedroom mourning Vivek's death. This was the first time I questioned what the hell I was reading, since things were mostly uneventful up until this point. I'm reading it, like, please don't have sex, please for the love of God don't have sex. They fell asleep crying. Yay!... Nope. They wake up and have sex. And then they imagine Vivek is... ... ... with them? During... sex? They both imagine him having sex with them while they're having sex. Like, a threesome. I mean, what the actual fuck is going on? Then there's these chapters were we get Vivek's POV (mostly posthumous), and the chapter after this bizarre one was Vivek like, watching down on them and enjoying it. Then the story just moves on like I didn't just read a pervy ghost happily watching his two best friends fuck while crying over him.
I know why this book is so popular with a certain demographic, but an average rating of 4.1 from 53K ratings? Are you serious?... If you look on 1- and 2-star reviews on Goodreads, you can see that some people with sense are even woke and say okay I'm loving the representation but what in the fresh hell did I just read? Why are there so few of these people? This book was really so weird and bad, the payoff was awful. At least it wasn't long, I guess.
If you think it's weird that I haven't mentioned the incest, it's just because I don't know what the hell to even say about it. I don't get why Osita had to be Vivek's cousin at all.
I haven't read it, but got curious from your spoiler warning and read a random review found online. As the review used the pronoun "they" for the author, I came here to read what you thought of it.
Seems my prediction that I didn't want to read this was correct. (The review was very positive, but when it started to claim that people in Agatha Christie mysteries always have impure motives, while in this book, everyone's love is pure, I began to suspect the writer wasn't very professional. It was this one: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898733187/love-triumphs-over-death-in-the-death-of-vivek-oji)
I don't get why Osita had to be Vivek's cousin at all.
The queering of social norms, I guess? We probably have to be grateful they aren't siblings.
As to why there's so few negative reviews, I suspect most readers forced themselves to read it for virtuesignalling. After all, the author identifies as enby. So that meant they couldn't admit to disliking it.
(The author is so ... arrgh.It takes a very special kind of stupid to grow up female in Nigeria and still start believing in gendernonsense after relocating to the US at age 16! And she looks like a totally normal woman, too, not even slightly gnc.)
If everyone must find (or make up) reasons to hate Harry Potter because Rowling is a persona non grata with the trans privilege activists, then I suppose it is only logical that everyone must absolutely, unquestioningly adore anything written by a gender special writer.
The queering of social norms, I guess? We probably have to be grateful they aren't siblings.
Yeah, and since you mentioned that I'll say that Osita often referred to Vivek as his brother. (Like, their bond was brotherly.) And yeah, your explanation makes sense. It's still such a mindfuck because it is a prominent part of the story.
Maybe the sexual politics of the book made a lot of (woke) people swallow it more easily. It's funny, I think the writer was trying to be ultra-sex-positive about it, but the sex scenes were almost exclusively heterosexual despite the main couple being gay. The very few gay sex scenes were over with very quickly while the (many) straight sex scenes went on and on.
Your last point (comparing to HP/JKR) is very insightful. I can definitely see that. Very black-and-white thinking, so scary if you think about it too long.
I hated this book, too. It was horrible. I also hated how all of the "lesbian" characters were sexual deviants and having sex with dudes as well. It was honestly a horrible and homophobic book in so many ways.
I found it homophobic as well. None of the characters seemed to be actually gay or even bi, just ready to have sex with whoever was in front of them. The teenage girls were acting about the same as the teenage boys were which I don't think is realistic. Teenage girls obviously have a sex drive but they don't want to f*** everything that moves the way boys do, but the teenage girls in this book seemed to. The sex was just completely out of control in this book and it makes me imagine the author as some kind of creep. I feel creepy even typing this comment out, I don't even want to consume a piece of media where so many kids are having sex all the time ever again in my life.