Radical

Once you start Radical you cannot stop. This page turner sucks you in and you connect with the characters right away. Kokie does a wonderful job with description, that you feel like you are standing right beside the characters in their world. Radical approaches modern day topics that our young adults should be talking about. I highly recommend reading this book.

Pacing drags in a few places (especially in the first half) but overall a good book. I enjoyed the ending.

I read a lot of books about young queer women and they're all fun but mostly forgettable. This one is going to stick with me. Props for somehow making a part about changing a car lightbulb also a sexy scene about consent. And great, satisfying ending. I would definitely read a sequel.

Where to begin with talking about this book… I mean, the main thing is that I have so much I want to say, and it is all really good stuff. But how to start talking about all the good stuff? That is where I am having issues. So first of all, this book is unlike any other YA that I can remember reading. Despite what you might think when you start in on the story, it is very much a contemporary setting. But from Bex’ point of view, our contemporary world is on the edge of a collapse. And her narration frequently leaves you feeling like you are reading something almost surreal. She is full of so much panic, so much certainty that something terrible is going to happen. It is supremely unsettling at times to read from this point of view, but I think that made me even more invested to learn about Bex and to figure out how she had come to be this way. Bex is a fascinating main character. She is a butch lesbian. I have never read YA with a butch lesbian lead character before. I know there are a few out there now (YAY!!!!) but this was the first one I have been able to pick up, and I loved the ways this book broke down Bex’ relationship with her sexuality and with her desire to present as very butch. There is a lot of give and take between Bex and her mother: Bex has this knowledge that she wants to wear butch clothing, she wants to have short hair, but she knows that this is definitely not what her mother wants. And so we have to see her giving up some of her own desires in order to maintain a decent relationship with her mom. It is hard to read the way that Bex presents this so pragmatically, but it is such a realistic portrayal of trying to find a middle ground between what you want for yourself, and what others want of you. I loved that part of Bex throughout the book. Additionally, I really respect the fact that this is a book from the point of view of someone who is pro-gun and who remains firmly pro-gun. I am anti-gun, very much so. But this book wasn’t about teaching a lesson, or trying to tell you what to believe about guns. It presents a character that is pro-gun, who comes from a pro-gun household, and you are left to form your own ideas of what this ultimately means for them. I so appreciate that this didn’t become a lesson learning experience or a big message piece. It was just about a type of character I haven’t been able to read about before, and I loved that. This book is intense. I mean, once you know there is something up in the story, it does a really fantastic job of keeping just enough information from you to bring out a lot of panic. You know something is wrong, but you don’t know the extent of that wrongness. And reading from the point of view of a character that is so paranoid makes this experience even more intense. The end of this book went a lot of places I didn’t expect it to go, and I admire the fact that I couldn’t predict the turns it was going to take. Beginning to end, I didn’t know what was going to happen. And if I tried to guess, I was wrong. I have had such a hard time finding books like this lately, and I adored the fact that this book really pushed so many new ideas and new stories. Like I said, this was unlike any YA I have ever read before. It dealt with hard topics, it centered on a character I have never seen at the center of a YA novel, and it continually impressed me. Occasionally Bex’ voice got repetitive, really insisting on telling the reader exactly how she would survive certain scenarios or what exactly she was doing with her gun at all times, but ultimately I adored how fresh this book was and I enjoyed it immensely.

RADICAL is a timely book, with its portrayal of prepper culture. It gives us that culture from the inside, which helps a reader understand how someone could be so paranoid and ready for violence. I was simultaneously horrified and sympathetic to the central character. A good read.

This one was off to a slow start, and it was pretty much slow throughout. What compelled me to finish this book to the end was wondering whether this Clearview group was legit or if there was something more to them. You also follow through Bex and her life at home, which doesn’t seem very pleasant to start with. Her mom tries to change her despite her orientation, there’s financial issues at the home, and her brother is, quite frankly, a jerk. You quickly figure out Bex is into guns, and survival training. There’s extensive description on how she takes care of the guns, how she loads them, fires them, and we can go on. It gets tedious and lets the plot slow to a crawl. If you want intrigue and surprises, this isn’t going to happen until much later. Much much later. There’s also focus on Bex and Lucy. They both seem to compliment each other and there is slight chemistry between the two of them but it’s not a romantic type of love story that you get if that’s what you’re looking for. They’re polar opposites and compliment one another but you also get that feeling it’s nice while it lasts. There isn’t much to the plot until the last third of the novel, which is disappointing. However it’s jarring to see how much of the concept of survivalism is drilled into Bex and pushes her to the edge to the point of becoming paranoid over every minute detail. It’s sad to see what her parents attempt to make her do, when it comes to the subject of her brother. It’s also disappointing to see hardly any mention of Clearview except for smidgens here and there and although it plays a part in the plot, it’s not what you think and you wish there was more to it. It would have made the book much more interesting. It wasn’t the best, but not the worst either. I’d suggest to take this out from the library instead of a purchase.