Book Review: Boys Don't Cry

I read Noughts and Crosses years and years ago and I loved the book. I actually bought them a couple of years ago but haven’t gotten round to reading them again yet (I’m a bit of a compulsive book buyer…) so when I saw Boys Don’t Cry on the Kindle store by the same author as the Noughts and Crosses books, I knew I had to buy it straight away.

Entertainment: 8/10

Predictability: 7/10

Density/weight of story: 7/10

Quality of writing: 8/10

Inspires reader: 5/10

Characters: 9/10

Overall rating: 7/10 

1. It is easy to read. I read the entire book in a little over a week as it was quite compelling to read. I felt compassion for the main character, Dante, and was interested to see how he would handle the situation that had been thrown at his feet during the first few chapters.
2. It tackles taboo subjects. This entire book is about teenage pregnancy which, in my opinion, has a pretty big stigma surrounding it. I like the way this book deals with that subject by first of all introducing Dante as an innocent lad with a potentially great career ahead of him and secondly by reinforcing to the readers that there are real consequences to sex and how massively it can impact not only your life, but also your family’s.
3. The length is perfect. I thought 320 pages was the perfect length for this book. It was a fairly easy read and I don’t feel like it went on for too long, which is how I felt about the last book I read (Eeny Meeny by M.J Arlidge).
4. Good - albeit predictable - second story arc. I liked that Adam - Dante’s brother - had his own problems going on throughout the story. His problems tackled even more taboo subjects, however the way the situations played out did make his problems a little bit easy to predict at times.
5. Inconsistent chapter POVs. I loved the fact that this story was in the point of view of the teenage father as this is something that we rarely see. I think it was great to tackle the fact that the father has responsibility as well and while I did like the fact that the chapters changed the point of view, they were quite inconsistent and the chapter lengths varied immensely.
6. The characters are human. I actually loved the characters. I loved Dante, I loved Adam, I loved their father. They all just seemed very real to me. They had their flaws and they had their redeeming characteristics but neither were too extreme to make them dislikable. I found it easy to feel sympathetic towards each of the main characters, which made reading the book effortless.
7. Links and questions were provided at the back of the book. When I read the questions, I imagined this book could be used during an English class as the questions at the back of the book were similar to those that I had to answer when I was in school. I liked the fact that it stopped to make you think about important topics in today’s society and I also loved the links provided so if you are suffering from something mentioned in this book - being a single parent, questioning your sexuality, concerned about your emotional health - then you have a wealth of websites and contact numbers to use.

I am glad that I read this book as it was nice and easy to read and made me think about how different my life would be if I were a teenage parent.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

- Taisie ♥ | Bloglovin ♥ Twitter ♥ Tumblr ♥ Pinterest ♥ Instagram