If You Still Recognise Me

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This is an absolutely beautiful coming of age story that seems like it deals with a lot, but… it doesn’t feel like a lot. I’ve been trying for a while to figure out why this book wasn't really for me, but I think in the end I'm just not the target audience for it. There are really important discussions of gender expression, asian fetishization, eurocentric beauty standards, and so much more, and I thought the author handled those brilliantly! Cynthia So deftly weaves a story that explores queerness, love, and relationships across distance, both geographical and time.

She’s introverted and struggles to make friends but lives for a graphic novel series and its fandom. The writing was so thoughtful and so beautiful, and there's so much quiet depth in this book that makes it stand out in the YA contemporary genre.During her last summer break before uni starts, Elsie has many plans and one of them includes telling her internet crush Ada how she feels about her. There are family secrets and I just loved seeing every single interaction with Elsie and every member of her family. If You Still Recognise Me centres on Elsie – having just finished her exams, her future is looming but she’s happy to (hopefully) have a summer of fun.

Exploring the bonds of friendship, family, fandom, culture and queer community, this is a story about finding who you really are at the heart of all the things you love. When can I have enough courage to ask my childhood best friend if she's sapphic because she sure hell make my gaydar go off the charts and how do I say I like her without it ending in the dumpster fire. I adored the emphasis placed on online friendships as, honestly, I don’t know where I’d be without mine. This is definitely a novel that makes people who feel unseen and unheard, feel seen and heard without even asking.I related a lot to Elsie, our main character, and really loved watching her come into herself as the novel progressed.

We can see how much Elsie cares for her favorite comic, how it shapes a lot of her conversations, her passion for it really shines through. With this range of ages, Cynthia So does a brilliant job of showing the generational gap when it comes to reactions to queerness in a way that manages to be both heartbreaking but beautifully hopeful all at the same time. It's a true ode to fandom which was so fun to read about; I'm not I've ever read a book where fandom culture is so accurately and beautifully portrayed!Though personally confident in her sexuality, it is all too familiar a feeling to mostly have that confidence internally, and to withdraw from those less accepting. There isn't much happening, so if you're looking for action-packed YA novel you may feel disappointed.

If the girl I was before still lives inside me; if I can draw out the ghost of her and colour her in again. Overall, a really great book that I think a lot of people are going to read and find themselves on the page, which is so, so needed. It is one of the best books I read last year and I implore you to pick this up, especially if you’re familiar with my tastes and know yours are similar, because this book could not be more up my alley if it tried. I recently read Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell which I loved, it’s the sequel to Carry On and I can’t wait to read the third one in the trilogy. good to know about some relationships developing too quickly, i always have issues with that too haha.Not only does Cynthia So show the importance of fandom spaces and give online friendships the importance they deserve, but they also use it to highlight the disparity of queer and POC rep in media, and the effect this not only has on teens themselves, but how it can negatively impact those around them. Not every issue was resolved by the end of the book, but having an open ending for those issues worked really well. It celebrates LGBT+ identities and queer art, particularly the comic Elsie and her internet friends love (that I would honestly like to read myself!