Dear Justyce

** spoiler alert ** Quan's story is of a smart child not given the chances to thrive. When he gets high marks on a math test he's accused of cheating. Even his mother doesn't believe him. His home life is bad. He and his mother and younger siblings live with her abusive boyfriend. He's forced at times to steal to put food on the table. Quan's a good kid struggling in a system set up to make him fail. He's forced by circumstances beyond his control to make decisions that will further criminalize his reputation in the eyes of the adults in his life. http://pussreboots.com/blog/2022/comm...

An excellent young adult read, an excellent companion novel to Dear Martin. I recommend it.

This is a great book about the criminal Justice system. It is targeting younger readers, but is engaging for older readers as well. While the ending is expected, it offers an aspirational approach to the storyline that is further explored in the author’s note.

I listened to this for Blackathon 2022. It is an interesting look at quite a different main character than book 1. However I'd liked it to be a bit longer.

Oh dear, I hate to be writing this and even as I'm writing this, I'm torn between a 2 or 3 star. I love Nic Stone so much. She is an amazing person that is open and vocal in the black community but also the LGBTQ+ community. I have met her recently and she was the kindest person ever and we had a really great conversation! So it pains me that I did not particularly like this book that much. Also, this might be a little spoiler-y, but nothing major! I swear! Let me start off with things that I liked. Dear Martin was a phenomenal book and I knew it would be hard to top. However, I agree with Stone when she says that Justyce's experience is not every black boy / man's experience. Many young people contacted her and wanted to see themselves in the story, which I could not agree more with. Quan is a boy that watched his father get taken away brutally by cops and sentences to jail for an outlandishly long time for crimes a white person would not get sentences nearly as harshly. He still wanted to make his father proud so he did his absolute best in school. However, even when he got a fantastic grade, his substitute called his mom and claimed that Quan cheated. He could no longer impress his own mother. His step dad was awful and was extremely abusive. Eventually money started to dwindle and Quan was forced to steal to feed his family. That lead him down the path of being apart of a gang in order to survive. Essentially this is the story of a young black boy who grew up in an horrible neighborhood and had to do what he needed to survive. He needed validation and a family so he turned to his crew. Unfortunately, that lead him behind bars for allegedly killing a police officer. It is important so important to view this novel for what it is, an expression of the unjust treatment that black people go through every damn day, specifically in the eyes of the law. So, I really appreciated that and appreciate that young black boys can see themselves in Quan. I fully understand this book is not for me as a brown woman, but I can at least sympathize with Quan. The problem, for me at least, lied within the writing. I hated the writing style of this book. Granted, this is an ARC, so I really shouldn't be too intense, but the way Stone decided to format things grew really annoying. Half of her writing was like this and I didn't really understand why. What point are you trying to make? Also, if one of the characters said "huh" one more time, I was going to lose it. As far as the plot went...there really wasn't much of one? Quan wrote to Justyce. Justyce wants to help Quan get out of jail. Birthday party. The end. Okay? Now, I'm not saying there weren't good parts, because there definitely was! But this book let me down in major ways. I didn't hate it. I don't even necessarily dislike it, I'm just disappointed. And that really what makes me sad.

The years between reading this book and reading "Dear Martin" helped my appreciation for this book. I remember really wanting love "Dear Martin" and a few things getting in the way. (The fact that I have this fuzzy of a memory of "Dear Martin" indicates that I should read that book again.) Quan's story hits home in a real way, as does his support system and the author's note that Stone gives afterwards which reveals how fictionalized that support system ends up for most people in Quan's position. This book definitely provides a lot of food for thought in an easily digestible amount of pages.

GREAT BOOK!!! It’s pretty much the same as Dear Martin but still another good book to read as well.

This gem of a novel was an emotional rollercoaster I just couldn't put down. I fell absolutely in love with it from the beginning. It takes a real hard look at what BIPoc individuals go through on a daily basis, and provides a glimpse into their world. It is a true page turner and I had a hard time stepping away.