JADE

This book was a very mixed bag for me. There were some aspects I really liked, such as the characters of Levi “Lev” Calder and Cyrus “Cy-Fi” Finch, as well as their platonic relationship that benefits both of them in great ways. However, there were many aspects I absolutely loathed, such as Connor, who is meant to be the real main character, falling into the cliché of “bad boy with a good heart”, Risa, originally the female side character with a minimal amount of personality being reduced to nothing but a love interest subject to yet another “fridging” trope by the middle of the book from the character Roland, whose character is set up to make you think he would never harm a woman and that would be his weak point, since he beat up his stepfather to protect his mother, but Shusterman just needed to someone to fridge Risa for him and needed a reason to make Connor justifiably mad at Roland. While it is a book that inspires discussion about its main issue of reproductive rights, it is largely a frustrating read that leaves you questioning if Shusterman himself also found it tiring or a bore to write. Despite most of my classmates loving the book, I myself would not recommend it to anyone at all, especially those like me who are beyond tired of the “fridging” trope being the only way some writers try to make the audience sympathize with their female characters. Of course, this was made in 2009, when the trope was less beaten to a bloody pulp beyond comic books, but even then, it was still an unpleasant way to deal with a female character or try to make the audience sympathize more with her. If you were thinking of reading this book at all, I’d really try to save your energy for Lev’s chapters, as they are the only interesting and less cliché parts of the book, not filled to the brim with overused tropes in an attempt to captivate the young target audience.