e-Audio, 12:36:29
Narrated by: Angel Pean, Ruffin Prentiss, Shaun Taylor-Corbett
Release Date: November 22, 2022
Published by: Denene Millner Books
Read from: November 14-16, 2022
Stand-alone
Source: LibroFM (I received the audio copy of this book from LibroFM and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: N-Word is said, Teen pregnancy, Racism, Mention of a friend’s suicide, Mention of abortion (but didn’t go through with it), police shooting, Death, Violence, All Lives Matter has a “party” -___-
For Readers Interested In: Dance, Realistic Fiction, YAThere is an unspoken agreement between the racially divided towns of Bayside and Hamilton: no one steps over the train tracks that divide them. Or else.
Not until Zach Whitman anyway, a white boy who moves in from Philly and who dreams of music. When he follows his dream across the tracks to meet his idol, the famous jazz musician who owns The Sunlight Record Shop in Hamilton, he’s flung into Capri Collins’s path.
Capri has big plans: she wants to follow her late mother’s famous footsteps, dancing her way onto Broadway, and leaving this town for good, just like her older brother, Justin, is planning to do when he goes off to college next year. As sparks fly, Zach and Capri realize that they can help each other turn hope into a reality, even if it means crossing the tracks to do it.
But one tragic night changes everything. When Justin’s friend, the star of Hamilton’s football team, is murdered by a white Bayside police officer, the long-standing feud between Bayside and Hamilton becomes an all-out war And Capri, Justin, and Zach are right in the middle of it.
*MY THOUGHTS*
So when I first heard about this I was excited. It was pitched to me as a classic remake (which I’ve been researching for awhile thanks to work.) So when the publisher told me it was a Romeo and Juliet remake I was like cool, cool. But then I got word that it was also for fans of THUG. Was it kinda iffy to me then? Yes. Was I still willing to give it a chance? Also yes. So I read it……………………..
OK so first things first, if you’re friends with me on Goodreads, I’m sure you can tell by my updates I wasn’t happy with this book. A common update I kept putting was “I hate everyone in this book.” So naturally, let’s start with the characters. Capri wanted so much more out of life than what she currently had. She was living with her grandma because her mother had passed and she was being raised by them as well as her big brother. Her big brother, Justin could barely take care of his self, much less his sister AND the baby he had on the way. Then there’s Zach. I know a lot of people would think, well what was wrong with him? Tuh…. Well there’s the stereotypes that were perpetuated and the white saviousrism throughout the entire thing. It was weird.
To go into more detail. Capri was the only one who had a even a modicum of respect from me. She wanted better and I can understand that. BUT she ignored everything and everyone around her to get it.. As a fellow loner, that’s fine, but the way she complained about it all the time or having only a few friends, well, that sounds like a you problem. Justin was her brother, but I didn’t like him from the beginning. He was always trying to like keep Capri in check like her parent when he couldn’t keep himself in order. He ended up thinking he was hot shit because he made the basketball team, so he started acting some type of way with his oldest friends. And at the end he was a completely different person. It was just weird. And then there was Zach. In the book he’s called out for “trying to act [Black] to survive, but they say this because some stereotypes are mentioned, like the way he cut his hair, the fact that he wears J’s, etc. And like, to me that just didn’t sit right. And then *SPOILERS* this dude tried saving everyone in this book the entire time. It could have been looked at as like a friend helping a friend, but the ending pissed me off enough for me to take a break. Like this dude convinced a cop, from a place like that, that he should come clean about killing a Black unarmed teen? LIke, BFFR. I know this is fiction, but it’s supposed to be realistic fiction. It’s supposed to mirror it in some way right? Because never in a million years would this happen. And then after the thing with him and Justin happens, he ends up being the martyr because people still go listen to his music and his death convinced his dad to come around and not be racist anymore. (U know, instead of get more racist because someone of that same race killed his child) it was all just so much filled with white saviourism that I almost DNF’ed it (again) at like 95%.
The marketing for this is sketch as well. It’s said to be for readers and lovers of THUG and All American Boys. And with those being two of my favorite books, I was hella excited for this. And throw in the fact that there was a Romeo and Juliet reference? I was sold. But after reading this, it didn’t make me think of any of that. The R&J seemed to be the fact that they were on opposite sides of town and their families didn’t like each other. And even that part is iffy, because there was only one person in her family who didn’t like Zach…. It was her brother. And there’s only one person who dies? Well, there’s two, but in R&J, it’s the couple. This other person was a friend, and not even of Capri’s,
The ending was (imho) unneccessary. It just pushed Justin even more into the stereotype of a Black father who’s not there and then sent him to prison on top of that. Like, was that not enough? I don’t understand. And the other person didn’t have to die. Like what was the reason? Idk, I just don’t feel like you could have achieved the same thing if you had just made it a fight.
Now that that’s out, let’s talk about the town. What year was this set in? Because it was like the town was stuck in the times right after the Civil War. Why was it written like this? For the R&J aesthetic? I just don’t feel like it was that serious. Because I mean the hot fry cheese on Thomas, the All Lives Matter “party” that’s held, and the other instances, I was thinking it was recent, but this can’t be before the 60’s or just the way the whole town acts in general. Because let me tell you, Virgie should have gotten her ass beat multiple times,
Now, you might be thinking. if she didn’t like it this much, why still do the Tour for it? That was mainly because I already had the footage. I filmed as I was reading., so I just used them. I ended up just using the reaction shots, but it was SO MANY of them lol I did a lot of screaming and annotating in this book. So what I ended up doing was just being really vague and put no ratings.
The one thing I’m sad about rating this so low for is the audio version. I was sad that one of my favorite narrators was on this, Angel Pean has been on a number of books that I’ve listened to and I really enjoy listening to them. And to make matters worse, it had an all cast audio. Alot of stuff for this book that just wasn’t great, ya know?
This book was nothing like I expected or wanted. I wanted another book about R&J and I wanted a subtle nod to the BLM like in THUG. What I got was a blatant disregard for the people I thought she was writing this for.
Overall, I give this
