- Release Date: July 24th 2014
- Pages: 368
- Genre: Contemporary
- Publisher: Razorbill (Penguin)
Like No Other has an easy pitch; take the star crossed lovers trope and apply it to a Hasidic Jewish girl and West Indian boy in 21st century Brooklyn with a meet cute in a broken elevator during a storm.
I really like what this book is doing in terms of the current state of YA publishing. It’s like yeah diversity in YA, yeah diverse cover art and oh look The New York Times is reviewing a diverse book by a female author. But despite my cheering for its successes I kind of take issue with LaMarche’s portrayal of the male protagonist Jaxon
I didn’t necessarily hate his character. Jaxon is a nerdy first-generation West Indian who represents the average teen boy and I actually like many of his introductory paragraphs.
It’s funny; I forget sometimes how I might look to other people. I could be reading The Great Gatsby on the 3 train, or walking down the street listening to a podcast on my phone, or coming out of the orthodontist’s office with Invisalign braces feeling like the biggest nerd on the planet, but some people don’t notice anything but an almost six-foot-tall black man.
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