I won’t be reading this book. This book is full of racist and problematic passages that have been highlighted by BIPOC on Goodreads and storygraph.

I think maybe—like Kat and Galen—I wanted to like this more than I did. The writing it quite readable. (I had an ARC, so I can't comment on editing.) The idea is interesting, the self-discovery aspect seemed well done, and the characters had potential. But, in the end, neither was particularly likeable, the romance is put off too long to feel satisfying, and there's just a whole subtle sense of ick to the story.

Part of the discomfort is in the blatant -isms of the vampires. And I'll accept that people raised in eras past might carry some of the attitudes of that past with them. But a lot of it is just baked into the narrative and apparent in the way Kat is such a fair-weather ally. Sure, she notices how few BIPOC students there are, asks Taylor their pronouns, acknowledges various forms of privileged, throws the use of 'boys and girls' at the headmaster derisively, 'as if non-binary people don't exist.' She says all the right things. But she's perfectly happy to overlook it all for her own social advancement. In a very real sense, that's the whole point of the plot (if looked at from a different angle than the author presents it to us).

And honestly, the author could have done SO much with that set up. What a chance to show self reflection and growth in the main character...not to mention commentary on a lot of real-world allyship. But she doesn't take the opportunity. The end result is a book that feels like corporate allyship...you know, where they say the right things during June and purchase the right optics (or try to publish the right books), but don't actually change their policies to protect anyone or improve lives and drop it all come July. So, ick. And bonus ick in a book with two baby-lesbians as the main characters and, one would presume, the primary audience.

All and all, this wasn't a big winner for me. But I do love the art on the cover. That's why I picked the book up in the first place.

Vampire Diaries up in here.. Kat transfers to an elite vampire academy where she ends up rooming with her former friend Taylor. Past clashes but they reconnect to solve some conspiracies that the higher ups are covering up, synthetic blood.

This was an enjoyable read but it was a bit too woke.. and I’m over people like that that are ruining our future and children ( that’s my feels and I’m allowed to have them). It was just a bit problematic and I wish I could get past it, but to each their own.

I DNF'd this. There was clear racism and classism in the book. Absolutely not for me.

I had been extremely excited to read this but that excitement was quickly taken away, I am not quite sure what the author was thinking when they wrote this. This book could have been absolutely amazing. It was so easy to not make it simply offensive. I think I got maybe 5% in before I stopped reading this one.

I am not a person who negatively reviews books usually but this was simply unacceptable especially for something I was so so excited for.

While I loved the premise of this book, unfortunately I did not connect with the characters or the story as much as I would have liked. I also know that several Own Voices reviewers expressed concern over some of the content and this should be taken into account when discussing the book or considering it for purchase.

I was supposed to be on a blog tour for this book, but the tour was cancelled due to problematic content. Having now finished reading this book for myself, I can see why.

This book is trying to be a look at how the capitalist upper class do not care about and actively exploit those who they see as being beneath them, and that even the rich people who aren’t actively involved in hurting others like this are still passively accepting this system and perpetuating that hurt in the process. That’s what it’s trying to do. Taylor and Galen just not getting it whenever Kat ran into a roadblock or couldn’t take a certain risk due to her precarious position because they’re used to things being easy for them because they’re rich vampires who’ve never had to worry about where their next meal would come from came close to being a decent allegory for class differences in reality. However, Kat always fell short of putting it into words that these two, especially Taylor as she got angry with Kat more than once over Kat’s unwillingness to throw everything she had away, could never fully understand what her life had been like and so why she felt like she had to act a certain way as a result. Also, the reveals near the end of the book undermined this whole message, so. Never mind, I guess.

Other reviewers have spoken about the antisemitism present in this book, so I’m not going to be saying anything new here. One of the people involved in the plot to secretly control the world using blood is literally compared to a lizard at one point. I’m sure that Laurens didn’t intend to incorporate antisemitic tropes, but it’s something that authors writing about vampires need to be careful of, and the lizard comparison makes it blatantly clear that Laurens wasn’t careful.

When protagonist Kat points out that this super expensive and selective school, only attended by those deemed ‘the best of the best’ by the headmaster, only has seven students who aren’t white, and asks why this is, she get the response, from the other protagonist who we’re supposed to also be rooting for, that poc probably wouldn’t want to come to a school this elitist anyway. Not that the way the system has been designed means that poc are excluded from the opportunities that rich white people have, but that they wouldn’t want to come in the first place. And then the matter is dropped and never brought up again. Huh?

There are two major characters of colour in this book. One is Galen, the super rich heir to a shady family business, whose mother is Indian. His dad was with the British East India Company, y’know, that colonised and committed atrocities in India, and he harassed Galen’s mother for years into accepting his proposal, and this is apparently supposed to be ‘not as messed up as it sounds.’ The screenshot has been floating around Twitter recently, and it would be one thing if it was shown that Galen is wrong about it not being messed up or that he’s trying to convince himself that it’s okay when it’s not, but that’s not what’s going on here. Kat drops the discussion, and doesn’t think about it any further, and it’s never addressed. I don’t believe that if a character says something in a book that automatically means the author believes it, but this revisionist history being left entirely unchallenged in a YA novel is at best irresponsible, especially when coming from a white author. Later on, Galen is asked why he’s not in the school’s society for students of colour, and he brushes it off saying that it’s not really for people like him. What’s that supposed to mean? He’s not white, but not so not white that he considers it to be an important part of him, and he seems to view himself as being above poc who do see it as important. Again, this comment is made without note and is left unchallenged, and while there could be room for a story exploring this disconnect in his identity, this story doesn’t get explored here, and shouldn’t really be tackled by a white author anyway.

The other major character of colour is a girl specifically described as being Chinese named Lucy. Lucy is a social media influencer and forms half of a mean girl duo with white girl Evangeline. Lucy’s role in the story is to introduce the concept of vampiric charisma to the reader, that’s how she got all her followers after all, and to cause a major incident in the book. Lucy throws a party at which she brings along some humans for the vampires in attendance to drink from, which is shown to be an unambiguously violent and horrific thing for her to do and for people to be participating in. The Chinese character is the most actively violent and has amassed a large following through mind control. Um???

The endings for both of these characters are also worth mentioning. Galen is left in a difficult position, with his future looking uncertain and unstable, and the main characters wonder if they could’ve done more to help him before ultimately shrugging it off. Lucy and Evangeline both tormented Kat and Taylor throughout the book, but at the end of everything Taylor is still in contact with Evangeline and they’re on kinda good terms, while Lucy is despised by them both and Kat’s going around telling her human friends that Lucy is ‘problematic’ and that they should unfollow her. First, I died a little inside at the Twitter-style phrasing, which Kat said out loud, because of the level of understatement there. Second, and more importantly, the white girl can be forgiven for everything she did, but the non-white characters can’t and either have to be left in a worse position than they started in or have to be completely villainised. Why is that? Why were these characters written in this way? I mean, we know why. It’s unacceptable, and frankly it’s gross.

There’s a minor running theme through this book that being apathetic and constantly judging everyone around you aren’t good things, and spending your life thinking you’re better than everyone else is only going to make you and the people around you miserable. Except this is first said by characters (Lucy and Evangeline) who don’t take their own advice, and Taylor never seems to learn it either, and right at the start Taylor was girl-hatey about people who hadn’t done anything to her except exist in her proximity, and in the end I could see what Laurens was trying to do but I think she seriously missed the mark.

Has Laurens ever met a teenager? The school doesn’t have a set of rules, instead it has an ‘Honor Code’ that students are expected to apply to every situation and magically know whether they are or aren’t allowed to do something according to it, with them potentially getting in a lot of trouble if they guess wrong. When I was in year 12, so when I was the same age as the characters here, my school had a dress code. The intention behind it was for us to dress smartly, but it was pretty specific in weird and unnecessary ways, especially for girls, disallowing some things that were perfectly workplace appropriate and allowing some things that were decidedly not. Of course, this led to many people making sure to wear things in the latter category. We ended up having an assembly telling us that we needed to dress ourselves according to ‘the spirit of the dress code’, a phrase which became an instant school-wide meme because of how ridiculous it was. If it wasn’t specifically written down in the rules, and sometimes even if it was specifically written down in the rules but we disagreed with it, then it wasn’t getting obeyed. Kat worrying about the Honor Code made sense, but any other student in that school citing it at any point absolutely did not. They wouldn’t care. Have you ever met a 16/17 year old who’s that pressed about not making their school look bad? Over ‘rules’ that aren’t even concretely written down anywhere? I certainly haven’t.

I’m aware that the Harry Potter reference in the arc is changed into a Star Wars reference in the final version of the book, however this reference shouldn’t have made it this far in the first place. Rowling showed her hand long enough ago that it’s baffling that Laurens included it at all. Plus, the reference is in the context of negatively describing how somebody looks, so either way it comes off as mean spirited and not strictly necessary.

I enjoyed the way that the scene detailing Kat’s queer crisis was written, with her spiralling thoughts being intercut with what she was physically doing at the time. I appreciated that it was highlighted that while some queer people always know that they’re queer, some queer people do not, and the belief that queer people always know who they are from the moment they’re capable of forming thought can do more harm than good to people who are questioning. I liked that Kat figured out that she liked girls, and thought that she probably didn’t like guys, but ultimately put the label question to the side as her actively liking girls, and specifically Taylor, was the more important thing. Taylor calls herself a lesbian many times, so this wasn’t a case of a weird aversion to the word lesbian, but for a lot of people it’s not that simple and it’s not that clear cut and all they’ll achieve by trying to pin themselves down immediately is extra stress. Kat is most likely a lesbian, but her figuring out that she’s definitely attracted to women, and deciding that figuring out for certain whether she’s attracted to men too or not is a problem for another day, was an approach that I did enjoy.

It doesn’t make up for any of the racism though. Not even a little. And the relationship between the girls didn’t quite hit for me, either. I would not recommend this book.

Paranormal isn’t usually a go-to genre for me, but when I heard about YOUNGBLOOD, I kinda couldn’t resist. I have hardly kept up with current vampire books, so it’s possible some of the things that appealed most to me have been done in other places, but a lot of things in the description of the story felt pretty fresh and new to me.

I loved the idea that the vampires have developed a blood substitute and that because of a pandemic, it has become unsafe to feed on human blood. The changes that brought to the vampire culture and community and the way that’s explored in the story were things I’ve never seen done anywhere else.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a boarding school that’s 100% all vampires, either. I liked that element to the story, because it created room to really explore some of the vampire culture ideas that I thought made this book really cool.

Not only is it a vampire book set in a boarding school, it’s also part murder mystery. YOUNGBLOODS has lots of layers to explore, and I loved that as each chapter unfolded, those layers kept getting exposed, and I kept getting more and more drawn into the story.

In terms of characters, I liked Kat immediately. She’s so sweet, and really wants to find a way to have connections with her people. Taylor had to grow on me. At the beginning especially, she kind of came off like the super judgy, too cool for the cool kids type that just tends not to be a character I connect easily with. But as I got to see some of her more vulnerable moments and see her use her anger and her power for good, I grew to love her as much as I loved Kat.

On the whole, it took me a few chapters to really invest in YOUNGBLOODS, but once I did, I really enjoyed reading it. I think readers who like paranormal romance like THE FELL OF DARK by Caleb Roehrig will like this one.

I did enjoy this book when I read it. Taylor and Galen were my favorite character and I loved the mystery of what was going on. However, it's been brought to my attention that there are several problematic parts. Namely, the conversation between Galen and Kat about his parents, as well as antisemitic tropes in the vampires in general. I would encourage the author to go back through and get sensitivity readers

This book started out as a fun, interesting read. I loved the lesbian representation, the tropes and, of course, the vampires and mystery vibes.

However, there were some things I couldn’t see past. The author—who is white—wrote some truly problematic things into this book. There were lines that were racist and wrong, like the implication that the colonisation of India “wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”

I can’t support a book like this so I will not be recommending it, despite the things I did like.

This book is problematic. One of the main characters, Kat, is portrayed as a white saviour being the only one to be against homophobia and racism.

If you love Twilight.. or you know the Vampires aspect of it.. LOL
Welp.. You will NEED this book in your life!
Vampires, a murder mystery, and more vampires.. SIGN ME UP!

The first thing that came to mind as soon as I began reading Youngblood is that it reminded me of Vampire Academy except what I love is that the romance does not run smoothly and it is a lesbian romance. Not only that but beyond the romance elements, this is one very well written novel with a ton of thought behind it and a great deal of intrigue. 

In “Youngblood”, one of the things the author Sasha Laurens has done really well is building the intrigue and mystery surrounding Kat and her mother. I also really like her world building, the thought put behind the concept for not only the vampire academy but the blood disease and how it impacts the vampires in this world, including the feeding on humans and how vampires are now born instead of created by their makers. 

As for the characters, all the main characters were engaging. I enjoyed that neither Kat or Taylor are perfect but they learn from each other. I also like how both get involved in the intrigue surrounding their school and society. Their romance and friendship don’t run smoothly but the romance is more powerful for doing so. I love the sexy vampire love. 

If you like sexy vampire love with a different background than the typical, I highly recommend this novel. It has tons of interesting choices in the world, how vampires are created, how humans are thought of and society in general. I found the synthetic blood and blood disease intriguing. This was a thoroughly fun read.

Kat Finn is part of the latest advancement in Vampirdom: She's a Youngblood, born from vampire parents rather than turned. Her generation is the first of its kind after a deadly plague began to kill humans and vampires alike and made feeding on humans impossible. Since that time, vampires have relied on a blood substitute called Hema. The community has mainly come together in light of their joint struggles— with the exception of Kat and her mom, who seem to avoid other vampires at all costs. Kat's mom is infuriated when she secretly applies to Harcote, the prestigious vampire only boarding school, but once she's accepted, it's impossible to decline.

Taylor Sanger absolutely hates Harcote. Not only is she the only openly gay student on campus, she's seemingly the only one not desperately longing for the days when vampires can dominate humans again rather than live among them. That changes when Kat, a long lost friend and former crush, becomes her new roommate. The two have a complicated past, but as a conspiracy unravels around them, they may be exactly what the Youngblood generation needs to prevail.

Youngbloods introduces unique vampire lore without getting too outlandish. I really enjoyed the intricate ways the disease, the search for a cure, Hema, and vampire politics intertwine for some fresh worldbuilding. At times, it felt a little over-explained, but I'd prefer that to flimsy details.

Kat and Taylor are dual narrators and I enjoyed them both. Taylor is more confident and interesting than the constantly conflicted Kat, but they're designed that way. After all, Kat is new to the true vampire community and she's pretty naive. But they both have some sweet moments, some rough patches, and some snappy quips throughout.

The romance between Kat and Taylor is really sweet and a bit sexy (for a YA book) once it kicks in, but it's probably worth noting that it takes a good long while to kick in. These characters have serious chemistry and you can tell they're the OTP from the get-go, but the book's romance and *its main plot* are victim to its own setup.

The introductory setup moved quickly enough, but the middle sagged until about the 60% mark. There was a lot of focus on setting up a series of secondary characters, only one or two of whom was actually important in the end. I was especially frustrated by Galen, who could've genuinely been an intriguing part of the plot if not so quickly discarded as unimportant once he was no longer a romantic interest. I understand that complex relationships and drama should be part of any good story, but the major mystery of a novel shouldn't be introduced more than halfway through. In fact, I stopped and looked uo the book at about the halfway point to make sure it wasn't part of a planned duology.

Describing the book as dark academia also comes across as a bit of a stretch. Yes, vampires are traditionally dark figures and there is an off-stage death, but this is a bunch of teenagers who just happen to drink the Just Egg equivalent of blood and want to get to the bottom of a conspiracy.

Overall, I enjoyed this one. The wordbuilding is all there, the main characters work great independently and as a couple, but the pacing didn't work as well as it could have. My experience may be a bit marred because I was very busy at the time I read it, but it was inconsistent enough that I can't quite get it to 4 stars.

I loved the idea of this book! Anything related to Vampire Academy or high school drama, sign me up!

I was participating in TBR and Beyond's Book tour of Youngblood. During which, we were told the tour was cancelled due to sensitive material that is not inclusive of those within our community.

Of course, I had to keep reading and sadly, I agreed. A school full of prep school kids does make sense with the entitlement and cliques, BUT I had some serious issues with comments that were mentioned in the book. First off, I think it was poor taste to have one asian character, only to have them villianized. I think that's really harmful for representation when only one character identifies a certain way. There was also parts discussing colonization, and cringy race comments.

Overall I think this had potential. It seems like the editor just let some content things get through that shouldn't have. I also think this would be a great new adult book if you changed the age of the students to maybe college due to the content being so heavy.

I will not be posting to my social media accounts because I just don't think it represents what I want to put out. I really gave it a try, and it has potential, but morally I have some issues with this book.

Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for sending me an e-ARC of this book to read and review. When I first saw this, I was super excited for it, but it honestly fell flat in a lot of ways. This book was so white washed, but it was trying so hard not to be. Everything that was happening felt cliché and a bit tacky. The main character was the white girl is woke vibe and it didn't sit well with me. There was also a lot of racist undertones and maybe a bit antisemitism/Jewish coded villain vibes which I definitely didn't like. I also thought this was going to be somewhat of a love story and the characters that were supposed to like each other were so wishy washy and all over the place, it was ridiculous. The plot also felt predictable and one note. I really was hoping to like this one, but there were so many things I couldn't get past that made this reading journey a not so fun one.

literally drafted all of this in my notes app so i wouldn't miss anything and made so many changes to add EVERYTHING that is wrong with this book. i still feel like i'm missing some of the stuff, though.

i absolutely HATED this book
like totally.

so our dear superwoke white MC Kat who is an ally because she asks pronouns okay,, her favourite hobby is to be an ally is all fine in her life except she's like really poor and has to do something to get out of that situation. she's also made to stay away from all the other vampires by her mom and now she longs to hang out with them so, she sends an application to this elitist vampire-only highschool and gets in with financial aid,, literally all her expenses paid

okay, it was fine till this point. her mom still doesn't want her to go and then Kat dearest is a rebel of course so she goes anyway.
there, she is coincidentally roommates with her ex?? bestfriend Taylor, then she tries to hard to fit in with the popular girls and catches the eye of the bad boy.

just like every other annoying “i'm not like other girls” girl.

then miss superwoke MC is also SO CONCERNED about the lack of “diversity” in the vampire school and then Taylor explains it by mentioning how no one would want to be at such a place where people are still crying about how they lost it all in the Civil War.

next, there's this one Chinese character, Lucy.
The author did such a terrible job with her character. she's shown as an evil person who is super rich and throws parties and then glamours humans to suck their blood when it is prohibited. like this one character had so much potential and it was ruined, just like that??

then comes our hot?? bad boy Galen.
who's half Indian.
as an Indian person, this part was so weird to read.
“My dad was involved with the British East India Company back in the day, so that's where they (his mom and dad) met.”
“You mean the British East India Company that colonised India?”
“He winced. “It's not as messed up as it sounds.” My mom doesn't talk about it much, but she's from a wealthy merchant family in Gujarat, and he spent years pursuing her until she agreed. He didn't just make off with a helpless girl from some village. Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

this is weird on literally so many levels. why is it “not as messed up??” the EIC colonised my country and looted it, made life hell for my ancestors, and it is not as messed up as it sounds?? they committed so many atrocities against Indian women. this is so wrong.

i also found a lot of parts that were anti-semitic but i would recommend reading Jewish own voices reviews for that.

i also hate it sm when the author makes discrimination an entire plot when they can display an inclusive community and still keep the plot going?? THE DISCRIMINATION WASN'T NEEDED IN THE WORST PLACE. harcote could be a queer-friendly school and the plot would've still held??

later, when MC is questioning her sexuality, she wonders how her friend told her “see? straight people always assume it's something you have to discover, but I was born this way”
EXCUSE ME??
there are SO MANY queer people in this world (including me) who spent YEARS questioning their sexuality to arrive at a conclusion and feel confident about who we are. sexuality is fluid and not everyone is "born that way" or whatever it is. this overtly discourages questioning people because it looks like why are they even questioning they should just know if they're gay
LITERALLY HATE IT.

moreover, the writing is BAD because wtf is
“the realisation burst over me like shit from a flock of seagulls”
and the characters were SO ANNOYING like making HORRIFYING decisions literally having no common sense also Kat was making up for her lack of father figure by making this billionaire her godfather daddy and trying to make him proud AND THE PLOT WAS SO PREDICTABLE UGHH i felt like a mastermind knowing exactly how this book went

spoilers??
also Taylor lost someone so close to her and THIS GIRL KAT IS THINKING OF TAYLOR HOOKING UP WITH ANOTHER GIRL AND GETTING JEALOUS LIKE MANNN LET HER GRIEVE WTF
she's grieving and miss girl goes
“(not that i noticed what her lips were doing)”
LIKE GIRL SHE'S CRYING SHE JUST LOST SOMEONE TF IS WRONG WITH YOU????

in conclusion, a bad book which is extremely problematic with so much racism and homophobia.

Dude, it’s a metaphor
Sasha Laurens’s Youngblood is one of those sci-fi/fantasy books that exists to be a metaphor. For me, that’s a great thing — I gobble that up. Among other things, this novel is an indictment of the upper class and the US American health system. That was cathartic after the last few years, y’know what I mean?

The metaphor aspect does mean that the mystery and plot (especially the love story) are secondary to the message — not that they’re not developed. Just know you’ll be a step ahead of the characters most of the time. Youngblood is a cerebral experience more than an emotional one.

I wasn’t surprised to find out that author Sasha Laurens has a PhD in Political Science. And apparently, her day job is researching protest in authoritarian states.


Speaking of romance
I f’loved that Youngblood features a butch (or baby butch) romantic lead. And another queer romantic lead who really doesn’t understand that she’s queer until she’s already in love with another girl. The love story is very sweet, organic and authentic. Also, the emphasis on consent was just lovely.

Though, I definitely wanted to bop both Taylor and Kat on the head for the number of assumptions they made … y’all, communication, it’s a thing. Do it.


Warning: this next section is rife with spoilers …

Well, that was weird
For a book so concerned with social justice, Youngblood made a few missteps with its treatment of marginalized characters, which gave me pause. Namely, the death of a queer character in service to the plot and the “epilogue” choices for two of the only characters of color with any real development.

There is an intense tragic irony in the fact that Kat spends so much time bemoaning the lack of BIPOC students at Harcote, only for the two she befriends to be thrown by the wayside of Vampirdome and her to just not care. I’m just not sure if Laurens was in on the dramatic irony?


While, tragically, it may be realistic for IRL marginalized characters to become “collateral damage,” it felt like an error in judgment for Sasha Laurens not to reflect on that. I could accept these outcomes in a work of metaphor if there had been some sort of mediation upon them by either main character. No, I don’t want any queer and/or person of color to be a Mary Sue, or even a “good guy.” However, if you’re gonna sacrifice them to martyrdom or make them a “bad guy,” you’d better have a darn good reason is all I’m saying.

Though this is a very sharp point of criticism, it didn’t come anywhere close to ruining the book for me.

Should you read it?
Umm, yah! I loved this book so much. You definitely need to go into Youngblood with the right mindset, though. Don’t read Youngblood expecting to be surprised; read it to be entertained. Youngblood is a freakin’ interesting book, with fantastic world-building, that raises great questions, especially for younger readers.

⭐️⭐️ /2 stars
Thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC of this book via TBR and Beyond Tours in exchange for an honest review!

Youngblood is a story about Youngblood Vampires, especially Kat, who goes behind her mom’s back to get enrolled in an elite boarding school for vampires. There she becomes roommates with Taylor, her ex-best friend.

I’ve been having a very hard time trying to write this review and it mostly has to do with the very mixed feelings this book gave me. While I wasn’t very overwhelmed or moved by this story, I did enjoy it. There was just this nagging feeling I kept having while reading it. Something was really bugging me and I just couldn’t put my finger on what was causing this feeling, but I knew it wasn’t something good. It was like having eaten something you don't like and having this nasty aftertaste that just won't go away. After putting it to rest for a few days it finally clicked. I was actually really disappointed by the racism and blatant disrespect in this book.

While I liked the plot itself, the execution was poorly done. I understand that Kat grew up with humans and thus has other views, but the contrast was just made way to big. As if she was better than everybody else, because she did ask for pronouns etc. It became a bit annoying actually how much it was emphasized that she did ask and the rest ignored it. It made Kat annoying and repetitive and it made all the other elite vampire seem more racist.

I found it also rather disrespectful how the only Asian character, from who it is specifically mentioned she is Chinese, is sort of painted as this bad person, because she ensues violence and has this “We elite are better than all other and thus why should we care about those beneath us” attitude, which is really harmful. It became uncomfortable to read the scenes such as the penthouse party due to this.

Another reason I found this book disrespectful and racist is a passage said by a character (honestly, I already forgot his name). His mother is from colonized India and brought to England(?) by his father. Him saying “It wasn’t like that” really turned my stomach. HOW can you put something like that in a book? It should never be even mentioned like that. It really felt like the author just made a character biracial, to just ignore the non-white half of this character and disrespect that.

The disease as well really reminded me of AIDS/HIV as I kept thinking about it. Something that was first discovered in the 60s, uncurable and people who are trying to find a cure for it. While that doesn’t have to be a problem necessarily, it is just another drop in the bucket for this book. it felt way too much like our real-world was added in a fantasy book.

The romance part of this book, which was quite a focal point of this story, it was also poorly executed. The build-up felt forced and a bit weird. Kat suddenly asking if she was gay and her “realization” were weirdly done and not believable to be honest, which made the relationship fickle.

The ending was also something which seemed unbelievable. A bunch of teenagers letting everyone hear the truth and suddenly they are believed and all is good. It seemed like a rushed and not thought-out ending.

Overall, the concept and plot were a good idea, but it was just executed really poorly and the racism and disrespect added to that made it a book I wouldn’t recommend.

There were antisemetic elements present in the story, such as a Jewish-coded villain.

The author uses racist and homophobic remarks to character the main character as “woke.”

In addition, there’s an Asian side character in the text; this character, despite being on the cover, doesn’t play a big role in the story (apart from on specific event, in which they are negatively portrayed/characterized).

There is also a remark about the British colonization of India not being “that bad.”

I wish this author hadn’t used harmful dialogue to characterize the MC, or keep her around for centuries just to prove she’s “woke.”

There is also a Harry Potter reference in this ARC, which is being taken out of the finished edition of the book.

After being alerted to these problematic elements, I won't be reading my galley of Youngblood.

so... let's get into this. i was about legitimately *just* about to start reading youngblood when a fellow reviewer on instagram (@bookstagramrepresent) posted about the racist and ableist shit that this book contains.

please go read their post for a detailed breakdown, but a basic gist: there were token bipoc characters, racist apologists, and multiple instances of ableist language and comments. not to mention the fact that there were harry potter references. how is that still happening?

seriously, all of this is just unacceptable. white queer authors, editors, and their respective publishing companies need to do better. don't read this book.