I feel bad to criticize a book that’s a personal memoir about grief and loss, but well, this one didn’t work for me at all. I pretty much skimmed the whole thing. Only after putting it aside and looking up other opinions online (several agree with mine) did I realize this is a sequel to King of King Court. So that explains why a lot of the characters and the situations they were in went completely unexplained or introduced. But it left this reader completely at a loss. Most of the time I didn’t know who the people were- aside from the main character’s friend, and his grandmother. There wasn’t even any indication of why he was going to her house, or who he had lost- I gathered that from summaries and other reviews, and some hints dropped in more than halfway through this book (it seemed).
What it is: the author’s father passed away after a long spate of drug abuse and incarceration. The author tried to do normal things like attending school, but spent a lot of time with his friends committing petty crimes and talking crap. He had to go stay with his grandmother and take care of her while she was bedridden in her final months from cancer (refusing chemotherapy treatment). It sounds terrible to say that this book left me feeling nothing. But the art style didn’t communicate much to me, the faces lacked expression or individuality and the scenery, while filled with meticulously rendered textures, failed to feel distinctive either. Maybe that was the point? I often couldn’t even tell what was happening, or where one panel ended and the next began (only a single line separating them) which was confusing. I’m sorry, but it was just a big eh for me.
Borrowed from the public library. Skimmed on 7/8/24.
