True Biz

Mostly good. What I like about this book is that it taught me so many things I didn't know about deafness, being deaf, and deaf culture. For example, BSL—I didn't know that was a thing! And, best of all, the book has a really diverse cast of perspectives. One protagonist is a girl who has a cochlear transplant and struggled with both English and sign language, another is a deaf boy from a historically deaf family whose sister ends up hearing, another is a woman who is hearing but teaches at a deaf school because her mom is deaf. The variance of perspectives really spices things up.

However, I also feel that the book could have been better. Now that I think about it, the only interesting parts were when something was viewed from a unique perspective (like the way Charlie perceives music with and without her implant) or when I learned a “fun fact” (like the absence of the word “to be” in ASL). Everything else sorta...was mediocre.

For example, this book has many conflicts and arcs. Charlie wants to be accepted by her mom. Charlie wants to learn ASL. Austin wants his sister to be deaf like he is. February doesn't want her school to close. And so on and so forth...

Buuuuut, guess how many of these arcs actually get resolved? Zero. Okay, maybe one, since Charlie kinda gets good at sign language throughout the book. Or maybe two, as we kiiiinda get a hint that Charlie's mom will change. But again, these are kinda's. There are no absolute resolutions at all.

You can say the book had an open ending, I guess. But I think...eh, I guess so, but it wasn't a good open ending. A good open ending is an ending that makes you think, think, think. An open ending haunts a reader for a long time.

But this ending...was just abrupt and...honestly, kinda lame. I liked the book, I wanted it to have a good ending and I wanted the character's issues to be resolved. This book just threw me their problems and left me with them. And then it ended to leave me wondering...what was it all for?

And also, some of the book, I feel, is kinda random. Like, one deaf kid's traumatic backstory is this:

1. His father dies in a car crash2. His mother feels bad, so she joins a church and brings him with her.3. He thinks the church is ableist, but he keeps going because he likes a girl there.4. One day, during a service, the girl decides to pull him into a closet, and they make out.5. The pastor pulls him out of the closet and pours hot oil on his ear to “heal him”Yeah, that's the backstory. Is this kid important to the plot? No. Does this backstory add anything to the book? Not really. This information is interesting, I guess, but the characters gain nothing from knowing this. Like, I found it interesting, but if you're gonna spend twelve pages on a backstory like this, at least make it relevant! Those twelve pages were technically filler. It's interesting material, but why didn't the author find a way to connect it to the plot? Plus, the backstory itself is kinda random. What did the dad's death mean? What did the girl he made out with mean? Why didn't it just skip to the part with the church and the oil? Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that some portions of the book are just random, and most of that random is technically filler. I'm thinking that this book could have been cut down to a good one-third of its size without some filler.

Overall, this book was good because of its insights into deaf culture and, best of all, it is an educational book. I learned from it, and that is great. Buuuut the actual story could have been better, I'm thinking. Still, the educational part was good enough for me to like it and want to recommend it to other people!