Skylarks by Karen Gregory

In Joni’s family, money is tight. Her parents work hard to get by and even Joni has a job at the library, while also going to school. While there are always money worries, everything always seems to work out. But her dad’s back is getting worse, and other troubles arrive on the horizon. Then Joni meets Annabel, rich, lovely, actually pretty sweet Annabel, and there’s a spark between them. But will it survive their class difference, or Annabel’s parents’ disapproval?

★★★☆☆

Trigger warnings: classism, elitism, money troubles, discrimination, mild violence (but not to a person)

I think this is an important book. For one, it normalizes f/f relationships in a context that’s for once not necessarily about homophobia and coming out (although we need those books, they just need to be not the only books about LGBTQ+ people). It’s important to have stories with f/f and m/m relationships that aren’t always about the struggle with the sexuality itself, but just about the struggle of being in a relationship (you know, like straight people in almost all books). And this book really depicted this teenage relationship as just that, a teenage relationship, and all the drama that comes with it. Of course, there were mentions of homophobia and coming out and how they might be problems, but those are not at the heart of this story, and that’s refreshing to read.

But what is most prominent in this book is the class dichotomy of working class and upper class. It’s about how the rich want to get richer, while the poor struggle to get by, to not be homeless, even when they work more than full time, even when multiple family members have jobs. This book is a great portrayal of that struggle, that constant anxiety that it creates and how hard it is to get out of it (if at all possible, as the rich profit from the poor being kept poor). It really makes you realize how the worries seep into a person, till it can become everything they think of. And how shit just isn’t fair, while it should be. This is something that needs to be talked about more.

Besides that, it’s also a cute, fluffy love story about standing up for yourself and becoming who you really are. It’s about finding strength and voice and courage to do what you believe is right. It’s about first love and figuring out how to be in a relationship with someone, especially when your lives are so incredibly different. The romantic moments are so sweet and cute it’ll make you feel all gooey inside.

However… I didn’t like Skylarks as much as I wanted to. What made me get impatient with this book was the writing. It felt odd and illogical and jumpy at times. It made me want to skim pages just to get through it. I didn’t feel like the characters came to live and they kept feeling a little flat and predictable. They just didn’t really became real. And I’m a big fan of character driven novels, and perhaps this wasn’t really, but I felt like this book could’ve been better. Dialogue felt sometimes odd and unnatural, the plot felt in many ways very predictable. Nothing seemed really surprising, except perhaps the ending a little. I really got the idea like the plot and the characters were not really a story or people, but rather vehicles to show this really important societal issue. And yeah, it’s really important to write about these things and have people read about these things, but I still feel this book could have been done better technically.

All in all a cute, emotional love story about important subjects, but I feel like it could have been done better.

 

Skylarks is out on May 3rd, and you can pre-order it here*

I was kindly given a review copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

 

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