How are You Going to Save Yourself | J.M. Holmes

WORTH READING?
Honestly, NO. The story lines are confusing and I'm only partially sure what messages (if there are any) this book is trying to convey. . . and if I am right then the author should have clarified or done more throughout the book to emphasize than waiting until the end.

FEELS CAUSED?
None that made me enjoy the book. I just felt mostly confusion and a strong dislike of the main characters. Though I was mainly hugely disappointment in the characters, I will say that I liked VERY little and only some parts of their personalities.

GRIPPING? KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES?
Ehh, it mainly held my attention because I was trying to figure out where the hell this book was going but to no avail, mind you. The author just drops you in the middle of the characters stories without much of a cohesive background or the ability for you to understand the characters themselves. Nor do you ever really figure out how they all fit in each other's lives as there is only one time that the four of them are actually all together. As the novel progresses, we just keep getting dropped along their timeline with little frame of reference and little explanation of how everything, and everyone ties together.

This book is raw and (after piecing together what I could) more complex and deeper than the jumbled and fragmented pieces of lives that is this novel, lets on. It has the bones to be good if the message was clearer and each story told had more meaning. And the character's weren't assholes.
I feel like I got the moral/message of the story: how black men are made into what they are by society and the circumstances that they are born in, and "Black Lives Matter".  But there were so many irrelevant things going on that I'm not sure.

I didn't like many of the characters (mainly their actions) but I still felt bad for them. And though I understood that the story is trying to convey that this is what the environment made them into but its like did it though...? Because smoking weed, hustling, and being tied to the hood is one thing but raping a girl is a totally different thing.

WHY SHOULD YOU READ IT?
This book may be beyond me and my comprehension but I still do not believe that there are many compelling reasons to read this book. Beyond seeing for yourself if my review was right, that is. Which if it is not and you have a differing opinion, please come back and comment to tell me so that we may have an enlightening conversation about this book.