Hey everyone! So it's been a while since I posted a book review, but I just had so
many thoughts about this one so I thought, why not?
I'll post one. The book I want to talk about today is Just Between Us...I mean "I Hate
Everyone but You" by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin of Just Between Us. This
best-selling book is about Ava and Gen, two best friends who are being separated
for the first time by college. Ava opts to stay close to home in California to
pursue directing while Gen goes all the way across the country to Boston to go
to journalism school. They go through the ups and downs of their first semester of
college and keep in touch via email and text. Like I said, I had so many thoughts
about this book, many of them good, so let's get the bad out of the way. My
primary concern with this novel is that it feels like a fanfic slash wish
fulfillment of Gaby Dunn and Alison Raskin's lives.
This book is literally if you took Gaby and Alison made them teenagers again and
made them best friends since high school. Gaby literally went to college at
Emerson and Gen, aka Genevieve, the character that starts with the G, went to
college at Emerson. Alison, in real life, is director and you guessed it
Ava, the one starting with an A, wants to be a director. I don't really know why
this bothered me so much because I'm a massive fan of Gaby Dunn and Allison
Raskin as human beings and together when they are Just Between Us and they have a
fabulous youtube show where they used to give advice but now they just talk about
their life and it's just - it's just really good stuff and that you can tell
that they put a lot of their heart and soul into this book. I think it's just a
matter of me being too attached to Gaby and Allison, and it was very hard for me
to separate Gaby and Allison from Ava and Gen because Ava and Gen are so
closely linked to the writers and are so similar. It was really hard
for me to separate, and I really like separation between
author and characters. I like that John Green right now writes girls primarily
and writes completely different characters from himself. I really love
the fact that he writes mysteries when obviously he probably hasn't ever
searched for a dead parents body...and I'm going to Turtles All The Way Down, I
should stop it. I really like when I can separate the plot and the characters
from the author especially if I really feel like I know the author well outside
of being an author, like I did with Gabby and Alison and like I do with John Green,
for example, and other youtubers who are writers because we get their lives in
real time in real life all the time. I think for me it felt almost lazy that
they didn't go any extra steps to separate the characters or make the
characters any different from them and make the characters have any sort of
different perspectives. I almost wish that Ava was the one who ended up being
queer and Gen ended up being the one who had a mental illness, even though she had
characteristics of Gaby more, you know. I just wish they had at least mixed it up
a little bit mixed up some of the characteristics made made it different
enough that it didn't feel like a fanfic of their lives. it was just one of those
things where I saw it immediately and then I kept seeing it throughout. And I
wanted there to be differences but it didn't feel like there were enough. But
there is a lot to be said for having a very strong voice and point of view and
I will get to that. Like I said, I did love this book. Another thing I didn't
really like as much - and this is coming from the bookseller side of me - is that
this book is very much sex drugs and rock and roll. It's very hard to sell a
book when you know that it's going to discuss sleeping with a teacher's aide
and polyamory and severe mental illnesses.
It's just not an easy sell to parents, and you have to trust that the teen is
gonna want this book without kind of pushing it on them, because I can't be
like "This book is full of sex drugs and rock and roll here you go buy this book."
um It's just a lot harder to sell that versus - like versus even The Hate U Give,
which is a lot tamer on those topics, even though it's about really
heavy stuff. It's it's a lot easier for me to sell The Hate U Give because
even even though both are about very important issues, one is - it's very
obvious in The Hate U Give what it's about and why it's about that, while in I
Hate Everyone But You, it's not as obvious why it's about these things
unless you follow the writers lives. um This felt like it was very much for fans
of Just Between Us and fans of Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin, and even though I'm a
fan of them, it didn't feel original enough because I followed them so
closely, you know? That said, anyone who's looking for own voices works for queer
novels or novels about mental illness, I highly recommend it. It is fantastic in
terms of representation. Finally, my - the third thing that I didn't like as much
about this novel - and this is just a nitpick - this is something that was just
a pet peeve of mine - is that even though the epistolary nature of this novel
really works, there weren't times and date stamps in the emails and text
messages that we see so it was very hard to tell whether they were sending these
emails in October at the beginning of the semester or in December at the end
of the semester. Even though obviously it follows an order and we do get some
sense of time, but like in an epistolary novel, I like having the dates. I like
knowing that on November 4th they sent this and then Oh! on November 6th they
emailed back so it was - two days later, and over the span of two days we don't
know what happened or we will find out what happened and fill in the gaps
between those two days. I feel like the epistolary - with the epistolary novel
it's very easy to establish time as a setting and they didn't do that. I don't
know if that was an editorial choice. I don't
know if it was the choice of the writers, but it just kind of bugged me that I
didn't know where in the semester they were. I actually didn't even realize it
was supposed to be over the span of just one semester and not two until very late
in the novel. So just one of those things that kind of bugged me. And now, for the
good parts. Remember, I did like this novel! Okay so like I said before, amazing
queer representation and representation of mental illnesses. The good thing about
it being by Gaby Dunn and Allison - and Allison Raskin is that you know that
they know exactly what these characters are experiencing. And you know that Gaby
Dunn is bisexual, you know that she is polyamorous, and you know that she's
experienced what the characters experienced in the novel. You know that
Allison has struggled with severe OCD her entire life, you know that she has
anxiety, you know that - we know that these people have experienced the
things that are in this book. The emotions are real, the feelings are real,
the things that happened feel real. A lot of the times, we see depictions of
illness or just depictions of being queer that are so removed from what it
actually feels like in media that it was so refreshing to see that. It was so
refreshing to see someone go through their bisexual awakening and be unsure
of themselves but try to act confident about it because everyone expected her
to be confident about it, and it was very cool to see someone trying to fit into
the stereotypical pretty girl act when she really felt out of place, and trying
to figure out where her place was in college while struggling with a mental
illness. It was very cool to see that and as someone who has both struggled with
being queer and mental illness in college, it was amazing to see that
because I had never seen that before in all of the books I've read. Another thing
that I really loved were very strong characters and very strong voices. This
is probably because they sounded like the writers themselves, but the voices
were fantastic. You knew who was who. You knew how
they felt at all times. You knew what their motivations were for doing certain
things and making certain decisions that felt wrong to one person but felt right
to another. You just knew everything that they were feeling and I think that's a
lot to do with the epistolary nature of this novel and the fact that they're
re-enacting things for the other person instead of seeing the dialogue in action -
in real time. I think it really worked for this novel especially because in the
novel both girls want to be storytellers of some kind. Ava wants to be director
Gen wants to be a journalist. They're both - they both want to tell stories so
it was really cool to see them telling stories back and forth to each other
while learning how to tell stories in the professional capacity. Finally, the
thing that was by far my favorite thing about the whole book is the healthy
relationship between Ava and Gen. Sometimes it's hard to remember that
friendships are relationships that need to be maintained and kept healthy. This
story has real conflict between the two main characters even though they love
each other and even though they - they try to support each other in
whatever the other does. They keep each other really accountable when they
disagree with each other and they are just so real about their pain and their
love for each other. And you see with the way the big conflict near the end gets
resolved that their friendship has lasted and will last because they know
how to fight with each other and for each other. They know that their
friendship will last, and they know that they have to work to make their
friendship las,t and they are willing to put in that work and it's fantastic to
see that about friendship because we see that represented in relationships a lot.
It's hard to see that represented with friendship. So who would I recommend this
book for? I would recommend this book for people who are 15 or older definitely.
It's not for younger teens, it's not for young people just because of the content
and the decisions they make. Even though these two characters are pretty mature
for their age, they're still so clearly maturing and so clearly figuring their
*bleep* out. And yeah, there is language in it there is a lot of talk of sexual
things that happen, including the loss of one's virginity,
including sleeping with the TA. including a lot of things. And obviously. it's not
because of the queer themes and it's not because of the mental illness that I
would wouldn't recommend it for younger kids. It's because of kind of the choices
they make and the things that go on that I wouldn't recommend it for younger
teens. I would also recommend it if you really like epistolary novels. I'm not
the biggest fan of epistolary novels so it took me a little while to warm up to
the to the format, but I did end up really liking it and it really worked in
this book. One book that constantly kept coming back to mind was PS Longer Letter
Later, if you guys remember that book at all. It was between two friends who had
been separated for the first time and they were writing letters back and forth
to each other, and then was in the sequel Snail Mail No More, they were writing
emails back and forth to each other, so this had that kind of feel where it was
definitely a long-distance friendship and they were trying to keep in touch
while their lives were diverging so much. That, but 10 times more mature. That's
kind of who I would recommend it to. You kind of know how I feel about this book,
and I don't have the book on hand unfortunately, but obviously you know
what it looks like. But I do like to always include a favorite quote of mine
that really stood out in the book whenever I review a book. And this one,
this is Gen emailing Ava, and this is her talking about her hero Edward Snowden,
and she has also recently talked about how she got with a girl, and things
like that. And so, the quotation is "Sexuality is like a river, and sometimes
it bends right into America's greatest hero." It's so funny it's just so Gaby
Dunn, like, because it's about journalism, it's about sexuality and how it
can be fluid, and it's just such a great metaphor. And I love it. So yeah, that
is it for this video! I hope you guys enjoyed this book review and I really
hope to do more. Let me know if you want to see more book reviews because I am
reading a lot right now, and I have so many thoughts about so many books. But
yeah, that is it for this video. Let me know if you enjoyed it. Let me know if
you have read this book, and I would love to hear your thoughts and were my
criticisms of it too nitpicky and too niche, or were they valid? I'm not sure. um
Let me know in the comments down below. Yep! That is it I will see you guys next
time. Bye! extra special shout out to Jay Patel aka PelonX for supporting me on
patreon thank you so much for your support.
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