Juliet Takes a Breath

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⭐ 9.0/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

I really enjoyed this book! It's about Juliet, a 19-year-old Latina lesbian who has just come out to her family and then left the Bronx for the first time to do an internship with a white feminist hippie author. She finds herself in Portland, surrounded by vegans and nudists and people who ask for her preferred pronouns. It's also only 2002, and this is all very confusing for her, because she's having to think about how feminism also intersects with LGBTQ rights and racism for the first time, and everyone keeps using these terms she doesn't know!

It was VERY interesting to see this world through the eyes of a queer woman of colour who is really quite ignorant about all of these things, even though she's living it. Her mind is just getting blown left and right. It's in the first person, and Juliet has a very strong voice that I really enjoyed and seemed really authentic to me. I especially appreciated the complexity of her friendship with her mentor, and also her sweet relationship with her brother, aunts, and cousin.

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