Satan Reviews- Books: Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruits

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit

Jaye Robin Brown

Harper Teen

Predictable spoilers and the like.

"It’s going to take a miracle for Joanna Gordon to get through senior year.

Despite being the daughter of a well-known radio evangelist, Jo has never hidden the fact that she’s gay, and her dad has always supported her." Until it wasn't convenient for him to do so. Great parenting skills there, mate.

I was conflicted about this book. I enjoyed the relationships between the characters, especially the relationship between the main female characters, sans Jessica, fuck you Jessica! On the other hand, the ableism and nonsensical plot points were aggravating to say the least.

I don't believe that B.T.B's learning difficulty was ever labelled and didn't appear to be any specific disability and I don't think Brown knew what she was going for. B.T.B just appeared to be a five year-old in a 17 year-old's body. Also, the general treatment of B.T.B by characters who were meant to care about him was patronising and often ended up as straight up ableism. His own sister treated him as a burden and we're meant to be okay with it? The person who treated him the best was Jo and even her treatment of him was iffy. I didn't even realise at first that he even had a learning difficulty and I just thought that he was poking fun at her, but no....

Pretty much everyone in Jo's family was homophobic (and Jo was quite possibly a little biphobic at times). The dad's fake understanding, but would willingly force his daughter back into the closet for his own comfort, the step-mother who was clearly uncomfortable with Jo's sexuality, the step-grandmother. "Blah Blah, why did you read the book if you thought the main plot point was ridiculous?" Because I can. Also, I don't get why Jo's dad allowed Elizabeth's homophobia. But then again, he sucks sooooo....   

Other moments that made me stare into the fucking void that is the corner of my room include: Jo believing that Christians are ostracised for their faith, Jo creating nearly all of her problems.

The majority of the conflict from this novel is created by Jo herself. All of her problems are from lying to people when she didn't need to. Why lie to the girl you're literally dating in a gay way about being out or even that she knew she was a lesbian? She could have even told a variation of the truth to protect her shitty dad. But she knew Mary Carlson hated being lied to and Jo repeated lied to her, knew she was doing wrong and decided not to tell the truth. But then again, Mary Carlson was being incredibly unreasonable when she was trying to force Jo out the closet because nothing says love like forcing people to do things they didn't want to do. For some reason, Jo never called her out on this. Or even Dana. Dana would be the first to call shit on what Mary Carlson was doing.

I did like most of the characters in this book from a story-telling point of view. The relationship between the main group of girls was realistic and was for the most part, pretty positive. And another surprising thing is, they weren't complete bitches who bullied the "misunderstood main character owo" as is common in YA and it did look like it was going to be that way. I say that but then they treated B.T.B like shit.

However, there's also the kinda racist writing of Gemma, the only black character of the book. It's a mix of bad AAVE and messy stereotypes and wondering why it was specified that Mary Carlson was white yet one else's race was explicitly said.

I gave this book 2 out of 5 stars as I enjoyed Georgia and Mary's relationship most of the time but everything else made me stare into the void.