Noughts & Crosses

i first read this as a set book for English class. it brought up some really good discussion and made a lot of my 99.9% white class ‘get' some concepts of racism that they hadn't before.
visiting home this year, some 13 years later i found the copy of the book i had ‘borrowed' from school all those years ago in my dusty bookshelf - whoops :-)
i think this book was better on my first read. i enjoyed it less than i was expecting and was less invested in the characters than i thought i would be. the age difference between sephy and callum now bothers me during the first section and the fact that a hostage is sleeping with a captor (despite their history) gave me shivers on my spine (not the good kind). when i was a little younger than sephy i could really understand the drama of being a teenager and the entire love story was epic and incredible instead of a bit weird. i can remember our entire class screaming in frustration of sephy's choice which i can now understand.
i did stay up till 5am reading this for the second time and finish it in one sitting so it was obviously gripping and despite my lack of connection with the characters the second time around i still cried at the end.