Review: Pritty

Netgalley eARC Review

 So for whatever reason, this book just didn’t click with me emotionally. I was engaged with the plot and everything, and I think it’s reasonably well crafted, but something was missing and I’m not entirely sure what. The book focuses on Jay and Leroy and their community as they work to protect their loved ones and fight back against the corporations trying to take over their community. One thing I really loved about this book was its focus on Black community. Everybody didn’t necessarily get along, but each character was connected to all the others. Although this is sort of presented as a romance, to me the romance was actually secondary to all these other relationships. Unfortunately, the downside of this is that the book wasn’t really long enough to do justice to all these complicated relationships, so a lot of them ended up not being as developed as I’d have liked. I wanted more of Jay’s relationship with his dad, of his mom and Rosalind’s relationship, of Leroy’s relationship with the Black Diamonds, and honestly, more of Jay and Leroy’s relationship, too – they spent most of the book not actually talking to each other at all, so the love story there felt a little bit absent.

A similar problem was present with a lot of the themes of the book, as well. I wanted more about the colorism Jay faced, Rissa’s experience as a trans woman, Leroy’s relationship to writing, school, and academics, and Jay learning how to navigate his feelings for Will and Leroy. There were just so many different things going on that maybe there wasn’t room for all of them to be explored as much as they deserved. And maybe that’s why the emotional connection just wasn’t quite there for me. Plus, the pacing of the ending was way too rushed – I was genuinely shocked when Jay and Leroy got stuck in the diner and there were only around ten pages left. I think it just needed another 50-100 pages to let the story really unfold naturally while also exploring all these beautiful relationships and facets of this Black community. Still, a very compelling, well-written book.

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