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    LCBO Food & Drink Magazine

    LCBO Food & Drink Magazine

    Magazines & Newspapers and Food & Drink

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    App

    Food & Drink is the free customer publication for customers of the LCBO, Ontario’s provincial...

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Kristy H (1252 KP) rated On the Come Up in Books

Apr 4, 2019  
On the Come Up
On the Come Up
Angie Thomas | 2018 | Young Adult (YA)
8
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This was an excellent follow-up to THE HATE YOU GIVE. Man, Angie Thomas can just flat out write, and the characters and worlds she creates are second to none. This book occurs in the same neighborhood as THUG, picking up a year after the riots. The neighborhood is still reeling, and nothing is quite the same.


"I'm a hoodlum from a bunch of nothing."


Bri is a wonderful character--a realistic teenager struggling with her love life and school, as well as the systematic issues of poverty, racism, drug dealing, and more facing her neighborhood, peers, and family. She's severely affected by what happened to her parents: the death of her father, who is famous in the Garden, and her mom's past drug use. The book does a great job of showing the pressures on everyone in Bri's family--her older brother went to college, but is back, living at home and working in a pizza shop, trying to help his mom out. Her mom is still paying for her past sins: trying to get a job isn't easy, nor is it easy to keep the faith of your teenage daughter, who calls her mom by her first name. And Bri--well she wants to become a rapper and earn money to get her family out of poverty. As such, she doesn't always make the best choices. And, to her, it almost seems like rapper is the only choice for freedom.


"That's how it goes though. The drug dealers in my neighborhood aren't struggling. Everybody else is."


Don't get me wrong, though. While this book is beautiful and does such a great job at showing so many of the challenges facing Bri and the Garden's community, it's also an engaging and funny read. As I said, Thomas is such an amazing writer. The church scenes in this novel are priceless: I was laughing at loud at some points. And Bri is just so vivid in her characteristics. She's a self-proclaimed "nerd" who loves things like Star Wars and some of her references and jokes in the books are just hilarious.

The supporting cast in this one is great--Bri's brother, her friends (including a gay BFF!), Aunt Pooh, the church biddies, and more. They all jump off the pages just like Bri. Much like THUG, this is a story of family at its core and even if you'll want to shake Bri for some of her bad decisions, it's pretty much impossible not to love her, her family, and her friends.

Overall, I really liked this book. It's well-written, tackles some serious topics in a great way, and yet is funny and poignant as well. I highly recommend it. 4+ stars.
  
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TheBookMother (105 KP) rated Why Mummy Swears in Books

May 31, 2019  
Why Mummy Swears
Why Mummy Swears
Gill Sims | 2018 | Children, Humor & Comedy
7
8.3 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
Very funny Relatable parent humour Deals with the topics of gender inequality in the workplace and relationship strain between spouses. (0 more)
Not real storyline Would really need to read first book to really get who the characters were and previous humour etc. (0 more)
A sweary sequel
I had quickly devoured the previous Why Mummy Drinks and finished this even quicker in less than a day.
It was very similar to the previous book in the series but I was a tad disappointed.
Whilst the first book had a loose story line running through it, this book didn't seem to really go anywhere and there wasn't really anything it led to.
If you hadn't read the first book I think you would struggle to realize who everyone was (they were introduced in first book) and get all of the jokes that had come from the first.
It's set a few years after the first book and Ellen is still juggling family, home, work and Judgy Dog (my fav character!)
The humour was as good as ever but again I found some of it hard to relate to like being able to afford an au pair!
I felt we didn't really go anywhere with Ellen unlike the previous book where she designed and launched a successful app and began to find herself away from her 'mother role' and address the balance issues of work/family.
Again the book deals with some darker topics of parenting most of us know only too well. Judgement and treatment of mothers in the workplace, how society views mother's Vs father's in the workplace and the pressures of being a working mum. It also saw how much strain relationships come under when both spouses are working and raising a young family.
It was a good read but I was slightly disappointed and felt it wasn't as good as the first and was perhaps a bit stagnant.
  
    Haleh Banani

    Haleh Banani

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    Podcast

    Haleh Banani is the first female to host a program for Al-Fajr TV called 'With Haleh' which combines...

    Vogue Australia

    Vogue Australia

    Lifestyle and Magazines & Newspapers

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    App

    * Enjoy the first 30 Days FREE with your one-year subscription * 30 Day FREE TRIAL - to activate...