I really liked this book. I felt so much for Sana, who is scared and angry and hurting and confused and silenced and ashamed and strong and flawed and makes really bad mistakes, and feels so deeply and hides so much of how she feels and who she is. She feels real to me, in all of her complexities and bad decisions and feelings. She reminds me of what it was like to be a teenager. 
 One of the things I appreciated about this book was how much the characters in it were talking and thinking about race, and especially how much Sana was talking about it and thinking about it, and confused and trying to figure out what she thought, and repeating back things she thought were true, and having a hard time recognizing how she was hurting other people, and feeling hurt by what others said and did but didn't feel like she could say anything much of the time. It resonated with my own high school experience, where race was constantly part of the conversation and also part of the subtext. (Of course, my experience was vastly different from hers in many ways, as a white Jewish teenager in NYC in the late 80s. It was the fact that conversations and thoughts about race were such a constant part of Sana's experience, that's what felt familiar to me.) 
 This isn't an easy read. So much of this book has Sana learning things, making mistakes, figuring things out, and struggling with the pressures she feels from family and peers, and growing. The things that she are learning are so important and so painful, and it's hard sometimes to watch her struggle with them. Racism from white people in power is described and depicted in this book, and there is also a lot of racial prejudice between folks of color described and depicted, particularly anti-Latinx racism from Asian American characters. In my read, it pretty much all gets textually challenged or directly challenged by other characters. There is a lot of heterosexism and queer hatred depicted in this book. In my read, it pretty much all gets textually challenged, and sometimes is directly challenged by other characters. I appreciated the authors note about these things, at the end of the book. 
 There are a bunch of lies and secrets in the story, and a fair amount of cheating, and these things resolve in complex ways. I was surprised how the situation with her family resolves into (view spoiler)[ an open relationship (hide spoiler)]. I did not see that coming. 
 I was rooting for her relationship with Jamie (who I adored), and I really wasn't sure it was possible for it to work out, especially as this is YA, and there wasn't an expectation of a happy ending. (view spoiler)[ Where it was left felt like there were still some things to work through, for me. But it felt real, and like an HFN that made sense, in the context. (hide spoiler)] 
 I loved the inclusion of poetry in the story, and how that worked. And of course that it included some of my favorite poems. I liked that she found out about the GSA and decided not to go, it felt real to me. Maybe she might go sometime, but not then. I loved how much it was about friendship, how much Sana thought about her friends and the people she wanted to be friends with, how central that was for her. I really liked her, cared about her, wanted her to figure out her next steps and what she needed and wanted, and cheered as she learned. 
 Trigger Warnings (view spoiler)[ Casual ableist slurs that do not get challenged. Racism, heterosexism and queer hatred that gets challenged textually and sometimes directly by other characters. Alcohol use. Cheating. Racist police profiling. Slut shaming. Brief moment of a teacher being sexually suggestive with a student. (hide spoiler)]