Still going to do this as a monthly post, even if I end up with none. Although I might start going through all my currently reading books on Goodreads and decide whether I’m going to keep reading or go ahead and DNF them. I mean when March began I had 36 books on there, and I know some of them I will probably never get back to.
There Goes the Neighborhood by Jade Adia
I received this book for free from Rockstar Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
There Goes the Neighborhood by Jade Adia Published by Disney-Hyperion on March 7, 2023
Genres: YA Contemporary
Pages: 432
Source: Rockstar Book Tours
Format: E-galley
My Rating:
Goodreads
Fifteen-year-old Rhea and her best friends, Zeke and Malachi, are South L.A. born and raised, but a recent wave of gentrification has been transforming the place that they call home. When an eviction notice from a greedy landlord threatens to split up the crew, Rhea and her friends manipulate social media to form a fake gang in hopes of scaring off developers. Their scheme appears to work at first… until a murder is pegged on the nonexistent gang. Yikes.
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD is a love letter to communities of color everywhere, a middle finger to the destructive powers of gentrification, and a hilarious adventure about three teens who have the best intentions, if not always the best solutions. Perfect for fans of Tiffany Jackson's Let Me Hear a Rhyme and Netflix's On My Block, this is an uproarious novel about power, friendship, and what really makes a neighborhood.
My thoughts:
So this one just didn’t work for me. I understood some of the things that were bugging me about the main character were just normal teenager things. But it was more than that. There was a part where they said that “they got out the snacks the copped from the 7-11” or something like that. No big deal that they just stole from the store. Then later she goes to look at videos online on how to steal from a store that has things locked up. I mean, yeah, her friends said they didn’t want to do that, but the fact that she was just all about stealing as the first answer to things didn’t work for me. It’s not something I want to share with my students.
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I can understand why you DNF’d this one. Casual references to stealing in a YA book isn’t cool.
Yeah, I can’t deal with that. Can’t support putting that in my school library. So they sent us a finished copy of it, but I’ll probably put it in my giveaway piles rather than take it to school.
I can’t figure out why you’ve rated a book 5 stars but DNF it. I’m obviously missing something!
It’s not 5 stars, the stars are empty. Check out a review that wasn’t a DNF. You’ll see that some of the stars are filled in. Not sure why when I pick DNF on the rating it still puts stars there, but they aren’t filled in.
Ooh, thanks to your comment I got it figured out and now instead of the blank stars it will show DNF! Yay! Thanks for commenting about it so I could realize it did need to be fixed. 🙂