Pizza Man

Reading this again as an adult...

Reviewed: 02-03-23

I read this in High School sometime between 2006 and 2010. It was one of the first books to help me start to deal with my feelings about my mom's death and other things that had happened to me instead of running away from them. It took me another 10+ years before I really started to figure it out and honestly, I'm still working on it.

It had been so long since I had read this, that it was almost like reading for the first time, especially listening/reading it from an adult perspective and reading it with my daughter, who is not quite a teen yet.

It struck me how the comic relief really balances out the story and keeps it from getting too heavy. this really helps to carry the themes of friendship, love, loss, control, allowing yourself to be happy even when it scares you, seeing things from the perspective of your loved ones even when it feels like they are hurting you. All of these are things that young people deal with and would benefit from learning and working through them at a young age.

The many different perspectives she uses, the way she helps you feel all the feelings and gives opportunities for belly laughs along the way really keeps the subject matter from getting too overwhelming.

I know it meant so much to me to hear my daughter belly laughing in the backseat of the car on the way to her swim class. I love that something that meant so much to me and held so much pain for me as a kid is just a "soap opera for kids" according to her, yet is still teaching her good lessons. I look forward to reading it with her again as a teenager and seeing how her perspective changes.

I don't remember the name of the narrator but she really brought the story to life for me. I have a hard time paying attention long enough to get into books but she drew me in right away, and her impressions of the characters were impressive and convincing!

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Blew.My.Mind.

Reviewed: 10-30-19

I can't even right now. The raw, honest beauty peppered with dark humor and intimacy one could never imagine the way J.K. Jemisin imagined it. This book blew me away. The story was wonderfully, impossibly written and I do not believe I would have understood and appreciated the story the way I did without the narration of Robin miles.

There was so much going on, so much new information, a language for a different world, that I had to reread the first book so that I could fully understand and appreciate the series going forward. It was worth every second though.

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