About the Book:
Deaf teen Maya moves across the country and must attend a hearing school for the first time. As if that wasn’t hard enough, she also has to adjust to the hearing culture, which she finds frustrating—and also surprising when some classmates, including Beau Watson, take time to learn ASL. As Maya looks past graduation and focuses on her future dreams, nothing, not even an unexpected romance, will derail her pursuits. But when people in her life—deaf and hearing alike—ask her to question parts of her deaf identity, Maya stands proudly, never giving in to the idea that her deafness is a disadvantage.
My Review:
4/5 stars. If the plot of this book was just a little different, and if one aspect I disagree with was changed, this would be a five-star book. The main character was one of the best representations of a character with a disability I've ever read. Even though I'm blind, not deaf, I could relate to so many of the same things as her.
I'm going to start by listing out situations throughout the book that I could relate to. Teachers needing to be aware of accommodations, other students not knowing how to interact with you, missing social cues (in Maya's case, it's verbal and auditorial cues, in my case it's visual cues like facial expressions and gestures), and other people making ignorant comments. There were also a lot of internal feelings Maya had that I have felt at times: Not needing people to speak for you, not wanting to be coddled, and not hating your disability but also acknowledging it has a lot of negatives to it sometimes.
While this representation was amazing, there was one thing I took issue with. It seemed like the author thinks of disabled/disability as a dirty or offensive word. At one point, the word disability was in quotes, as if that's what other people had called Maya but she actually wasn't. Later, she has a confrontation with another character and defended herself by saying that she wasn't disabled, she just couldn't hear.
The word disability is not bad. It's actually worse to say someone doesn't have a disability, because it diminishes that there are things that we can't do and need accommodations for. It also is a definition that allows other people to be aware and to get the services we need. It's like trying to use the politically-correct phrase "differently-abled." Everyone is technically differently abed, but some people have something that actively doesn't work as well as most people.
Moving on to the actual writing and plot, I liked the personal voice of the narrative. It wasn't filled with incredible prose by any means, but it worked for this story. It felt like Maya was telling the readers a story in her own voice. At the same time, though, it wasn't overly cringey and trying to be young, as some "personal" writing styles tend to feel.
The romance was nice. The love interest was such a sweet and caring guy. I also thought the way the romance developed was very realistic. It wasn't a hot and heavy relationship that fills a lot of romance books, but it also wasn't way too cheesy and silly. It was an average high school romance, and I liked it.
Another critique I have is about the ending. It felt a little rushed, and also wasn't much of a conclusion. There was an epilogue that was nice, but the ending of the main plot was very sudden. I don't know what it is beyond that, exactly, but I wasn't a fan of the ending.
Content:
Language: P*ssed off
Sexual Content: Kissing, and how it makes the character feel is described
Violence/Gore: A medical emergency where a character can't breathe, talk of a fatal car crash that happened in the past
Drugs/Alcohol: None
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