The premise of this book seems straightforward on its face, but it is deep and complex. It explores what it is like to be a queer kid in high school and the influences and pressures that come along with just being a teenager. It is about a school administration’s treatment of students of color versus white students, bullying and policing in schools. It is about what it means to be a parent and what parents do and sacrifice for their children. It is a story about first loves, friendship and dreams of flying too close to the sun. I really enjoyed reading this book!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for a digital advanced copy of this book! All thoughts in this review are my own🩷

5/5⭐

Wow, I devoured this book. I loved so many elements of this. There was SO MUCH going on, but not in the way that it felt overwhelming. It was more that I couldn't put it down. It gripped my heart. The author dives into heavy topics such as racism, police brutality, sexism, slut shaming, privilege, and homophobia. It can be really heavy at times, but she weaves this story that leaves you just enamored by the main character as she discovers herself. As she takes chances, experiences pain, makes mistakes, takes risks, makes art and experiences love.

This book is set in Florida, likely a state that will also ban it. The irony in that is beyond words.

It shares some of the culture of Indian families but tackles family trauma and challenge.

There's just so much that happens and I wish I could keep reading about these characters. I want side character stories and to watch Maya continue to grow. I want a story about her Mom. I want IT ALLLLLL.

This was one I forgot I requested and was approved for randomly. I was worried about having to fit it into my tight schedule, but I read it quick and loved it deeply. I am glad this book will soon be available for young brown girls to read, as I imagine it to be even more powerful for them.
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What a powerful story about queerness, family, and society!

Maya is a sophomore in a south Florida high school who loves art, her friends, and her Amma. When she re-meets Juneau, her world shifts as she realizes the disparity between authority and students - especially students of color. Not all shifts lead to good things, and she has to reconcile who she's becoming with who she wants to be.

Maya's journey is amazing! What's scary is how much it reflects real happenings around the United States. The writing had elements of lyricism to it, and all the characters were complex with their own lives independent of Maya's. This is easily one of my favorite reads this year.

an engaging coming of age story


thank you to netgalley and to the publisher for this review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review..

This book was just so beautifully written, the author painted pictures with her words, much like her main character painted with actual paint. I highlighted so many sentences and turns of phase that stood out to me, like "August ran into September like watercolors." Lovely.

The story itself was also very readable and compelling. I was reminded a lot of Never Have I Ever, and not just because the main character is a desi child of immigrants- it was also in how while she was undergoing the process finding herself, she almost lost so much.

The book touches on a lot of important themes - the school to prison pipeline, racial injustice, systemic racism, slut shaming, feminism, homophobia, and so many more, you think it couldn't possibly do more than give a brief surface overview, but it manages more than that, and I loved it for it. A beautiful, important read.

- ALL THE YELLOW SUNS caught my eye randomly on Netgalley, and I'm so glad it did. This book is one of the thorniest YA novels I've read in a long time, getting deep into the nuances of the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, all while having a set of characters who feel real.
- I love a book where girls are allowed to be messy and angry and make mistakes. I also love a book where what's a mistake and what's the right choice might not be immediately clear to the characters, and this book is all that and more.
- So much of this book is about the gray areas, and when good people do questionable (or bad) things. I think YA often gets knocked as being simplistic, but ALL THE YELLOW SUNS shows that doesn't have to be the case.

Thank you to Malavika Kannan and Little Brown Books for this ARC!

what an emotional and impactful debut! i loved maya and how real she felt, her flaws and mistakes that she makes during the story. i also loved getting an insight to growing up at a native American teen as well as being queer.

3.5/5
‘All the Yellow Suns’ encapsulates everything I love about a good coming-of-age YA from Kannan’s vibrant prose to the realistic characterisation. Maya, as a protagonist, is driven and passionate in a way that feels achingly similar to 16-year-old me and is what makes her such a compelling character. I loved how the book focuses on her using her art to express her voice and also explores the overarching themes of intersectionality, queer love, “casual” racism, turbulent family dynamics, and just being a young girl in an often hostile world. Reading the book felt like watching a movie set on paper, I could easily see this becoming a YA movie with an unforgettable soundtrack.
On that same note, perhaps because of how similar this felt to other YA novels (despite its novelty in terms of representation), this book unfortunately was not as memorable as I hoped it to be. I felt like some of the larger conversations that this book attempted to have could have been better explored if not omitted. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for an interesting yet easy-to-read YA novel with an interesting cast of characters then I definitely recommend picking up this book!

I read an eARC of All the Yellow Suns by Malavika Kannan. Thank you, NetGalley and Little Brown Books.

This is a book full of emotions. It is the story of Maya, an Indian American who has been a good girl all her life with amazing grades, even getting in Calculus in her Sophomore year of high school, when a fight at school has her on the side of her friend and getting the attention of a group of students who are doing things behind the scenes to try and get justice for their school. Maya, who has found herself instantly infatuated with Juneau, signs up with them, and soon their next step is to make a mural on the football field’s scoreboard.

Soon she finds herself in confrontations with her friends and even the principal of the school and his grandson. She finds people telling her that she’s angry all the time and not doing things correctly to make people see things her way. As she learns to stand up for herself, mixed with her own family problems, and romantic entanglements, things come to a crashing end.

This is book is important and amazing. I loved every moment of it. At first, it does seem to be as black and white as Maya points out, but as the book goes on, it shows how the world has been shaped like this. How it can be more complicated, but in other ways how it was just as simple as she always thought it was. Maya makes mistakes. Other characters are flawed, and while some you can’t see the good qualities of them in this story, others you can see how they crumbled and came to do the actions they did or the ways they now think.

Though there is one character I think gets a little too much of a “he needed to do that”, because no, he just failed to uphold what the others did. I can see why he failed, but also screw him.

As I said, this book provokes emotions. It’s meant to. It does exactly what it was meant to do, and I definitely say give it a read.

I want to start this review by thanking NetGalley for allowing me this ARC of All the Yellow Suns! In exchange for letting me read this novel before its publishing date, I will be giving an honest review. With that being said, let me tell you how much I loved this book...

Where to even begin with this novel? I came into this experience with little to no expectations. I requested the title on NetGalley because the cover grabbed my attention and I was in a bit of a slump. I haven't been a super big fan of YA recently, so I went in with that knowledge, too. The premise sounded interesting enough, though, so I gave it a go so I could finish it before pub day. I am so glad I did because I ended up finishing it in pretty much 24 hours.

Let me start by saying that it wasn't the characters in the novel that made me enjoy it so much. Every single person, including Maya, the MC, is flawed and honestly, I didn't find myself to gravitating towards many of them. With that being said, though, the way in which the characters interact with each other is what made the book feel lively to me. All the characters are so well-developed that at points they start to jump off the page and into the room with you. They're incredibly well-written and I really enjoyed getting to know them more and more as the story went on.

The issues tackled in this story seem grandiose at first and for a while, I wasn't sure if they were going to be able to be tackled in one book, or if everything was going to start to feel rushed. Maya and her friends take on a lot of heavy issues surrounding police violence, homophobia, micro+macro aggressions, and gender-based violence. There is so much to unpack in their small suburb of Citrus Grove and Kannan does it perfectly. I never once felt like topics were being placed in the plotline just for the sake of having them there. Everything was intentional and handled in the novel in a way that didn't feel disjointed. Maya and her friends are passionate (if not incredibly naive) teenagers facing serious injustices, and I was more than happy to be brought along in their fight against cruelty and the systems that oppress them.

While this book isn't focused especially on romantic relationships, our MC Maya does discover and explore her sexuality over the course of this book. I think this was my favorite part of the entire novel. Kannan does such an incredible job taking us through Maya's personal discoveries on sexuality and how that impacts her platonic, romantic, and interpersonal relationships. There were so many instances where Maya's internal dialogue surrounding her queerness felt exactly like what my early queerness was, and what I'm sure the authors felt like as well. It's not always pretty, and there are many people who get hurt and/or confused in the process of discovering who you really are, especially in a small, conservative town, but this novel really sends home the truth that the people who matter most will stick around. Maintaining relationships of all kinds, with your friends, your parents, and your mentors is just as important as finding a romantic partner to be entangled with, and ATYS shows that beautifully.

Your first Love, especially your first gay Love, will not be your last, and that is more than okay. It is actually (definitely) for the best. Things get really messy your sophomore year of high school, but that will usually turn out okay, too. This book reminded me of all these things and more. After reading this, I want to hug my parents a little tighter, hang out with my friends for a little longer, and get to saving the world a little faster. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my physical copy of All the Yellow Suns so I can reread it and re-love this wonderful novel all over again in a few short weeks, and then hopefully for many more years to come. Do yourself a favor and meet Maya, and then stay on the lookout for everything else Malavika Kannan will do in her future. I know I'll be.

All the Yellow Suns is an explosive debut, all about the teenage rage of misogyny, racism faced by them in their everyday environments and classism. I loved the concept of Pugilists, how they strived to bring about an awareness and not in a quiet way. Above all that, I loved that this book centers around an Indian-American girl, a dark skinned girl like me, embracing her inner artist and her sexuality as a lesbian. At the heart of it, All the Yellow Suns is Maya celebrating queer love and rightfully causing standing up against injustice. (full rtc on the blog!)

Thank you Netgalley for providing this ARC!
Wow wow wow this book has me speechless; it was magic and I raced to finish (while on vacation so it was VERY important to me).
First of all, political outrage from teens is always fantastic, but our main cast was majority folks of color (Maya is Indian and an immigrant, her friends are also Indian, or Black for the most part!). There is so much critique of the police force, tons of commentary of misogyny and racism and so many other problems kids face in the US every day.
Then on top of that! We have lesbian characters!!!!! Indian girls who label themselves lesbians!!! I think that will be so so important for kids to see in such a fantastic story.
Really this story had so many important topics it examines and the story itself (Kids Causing Havoc In The Name Of Justice) I just can’t wait to recommend it to everyone

Was pleasantly surprised with this novel and didn’t expect to get an arc. I wouldn’t say this book is like Aristotle and Dante so don’t read this book hoping for a narrative like that.
I liked how the side characters were written. They weren’t forgettable and I had no trouble remembering their roles in the story. I enjoyed the discussion about Eurocentric art being the focal point in that industry and how people of color often have to sway away from their culture in order for their art to get recognized.
The reasons for Maya following and obeying Juneau were compelling so that you understood Maya’s actions.
I enjoyed learning about Juneau’s past and how the author didn’t try to make her fall on either side of the good/bad spectrum. She is a character with vices and virtues. I liked Maya’s understanding and empathy toward her Mother’s outlook and reserves on queerness.
Considering the narrative I felt that the turnout of Juneau’s and Maya’s relationship was realistic. I can always appreciate when a dynamic is done right.

What a wonderful little book. I am really grateful that I got to read this book early. It has SO much love, heart and wonderful characters to gush over. I will say, if I had to nitpick, I do wish the book had started a bit stronger. Especially the first few pages I feel like there are SO many names to keep track off and for me, that meant I had to push through the start, only to fall in love later!

Such a fantastic book! Not only was it a wonderful YA centered around identity and self-discovery, it was written by such a phenomenal, young author. I cannot wait for this release so my young adults can read it themselves!

I thought Maya was a strong main character and worked well the story going on, it had everything that I was looking for. It had a great coming of age story and I enjoyed how good everything was. It worked as a young adult novel with a great cast of characters. Malavika Kannan has a great writing style that I was hooked on from the first page. I can't wait to read more from Malavika Kannan.

"Do you actually love him?” I asked. “Like, love-in-reverse love him?” I spoke our shared phrase aloud, holding it out like an offering. Juneau considered, salad fork midway to her mouth. “Who knows?” she said, biting the kale with a crunch. “I know my hormones are pleased to see him. Isn’t that enough?”

I have been waiting to read this book for months and it did not disappoint. I loved everything about this book. The characters are so well developed, the dialog is realistic and the writing is beautiful. The author is able to include beautiful metaphors and writing amongst text that is easy to read and understand. This book covers important topics as well that I loved to read about.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read this eARC.

While I found this story interesting and I enjoyed it, there was a lot going on and it was a bit chaotic. I felt that this could've used some editing down.

I really liked the first third or so of this book, but there was just so much going on and everything resolved way too easily. I think cutting one of the plotlines would have made it a more effective coming of age story instead of just chaos.