I always encourage people to read fiction by and about diverse characters as you can learn just as much, if not more from doing so than just non-fiction and biographical alone.

This is a great example of that. As a trans man, many of Yadriel's thoughts and feelings resonated with me. But Latinx culture is something completely new to me, so I really enjoyed learning more about Yadriel's beliefs and community and how that impacted his life as a trans person.

I loved the story between Yadriel and Julian and I think the ending was really well done. Overall, a really great book that will definitely lead me to read others by Aiden Thomas.

The things I wasn't so keen on are kind of a double-edged sword. Despite really enjoying learning more about the culture, I found it really difficult to get into the first chapter as it felt so exposition heavy and dense. Once I got past that it was fine, but if I hadn't heard such good things about the book this might have put me off reading further.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***


The only other thing I wasn't so keen on was that - whilst the "baddy" made sense - it was a shame that it was the only other person who didn't have powers. And whilst this made sense to the story, I wasn't keen on how black and white it felt that one of them was good and it sort of corrupted the other one. It might have been more interesting if we heard about others who had no or less powers so it felt less binary good vs evil, and would also have further demonstrated and strengthened what was being said about the powers diluting over time.