I just want a paperback of By Any Means Necessary...

 

By Any Means Necessary by Candice Montgomery was one of those books that sat on my book wishlist for a good long while before I finally bought it. But that might have something to do with the fact that there simply was no paperback version available for me to buy, and I am one of those people that doesn’t like hardbacks. Yes, they’re pretty to look at, but I hate those paper sleeves they come with, I’ll say it. What’s the point in having a hardback book if you’re just going to put paper over it? Also, the good bestie (me) doesn’t have the shelf space for hardbacks – no matter how nice they look.

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Either way, the Blurbie: Fully Loaded (starring Lindsay Lohan) says that on the day Torrey moves and officially becomes a college freshman, he gets a call that might force him to drop out before he’s even done his orientation. And that is that the bank is foreclosing on the bee farm his uncle, Miles, left him. It then mentions Torrey worked hard to be the first member of his family to go to college, Uncle Miles always encouraged him to reach his full potential, and that for years, it was just Torrey and Miles working the farm. So, basically, he doesn’t want this memory of his uncle, who has lifted him up so high, to be forgotten.

But we’re told that the apiary – the bee farm – is going under from the very first chapter when Torrey and his Aunt Lisa are on the phone while he’s moving into his dorm and she’s telling him it’s happening. Then a little later he’s like “I need to go home”, but then his roommate, Desh, tells him that there’s nothing he can do for the night so he might as well go to this social event his university was throwing. Also, he’s at university in San Francisco, and his family are in LA, for context. During this event, he meets up with these four black girls in STEM *woman in stem meme*, which we love to see, that seems basically become his friend group, and then he gets this follow from a random Instagram account (I think it was Instagram) which he then follows back and immediately gets a DM from, saying that they finally found him – and it ends up being the first boy he ever kissed – Gabriel London Silva. What a name. And Gabriel’s backstory is that basically after they kissed, his family up and moved to Ohio, but he mentions in the DMs that he’s back in California, conveniently, and even more conveniently, at the same uni. Then the final thing that feels like in set-up portion of this book is when Torrey calls Theo (a relative of Torrey) and Theo tells him that the farm is set to be auctioned off in 30 days.

And poor Torrey, as the story progresses, he’s fully balancing university, the whole mess with the apiary and everything that’s going on with Gabriel, who, I never actually mentioned previously, is said to have a girlfriend at the beginning of their meeting. There then comes a point, after Torrey has done a little wrestling in his mind about what he should do where he decides that he should basically go back home, presumably quitting school, to go and deal with the apiary – even after his Aunt Lisa told him to stay in San Francisco. But what seemed to be the case in this book was that once there was a pull in one certain direction for Torrey, along came something to pull him back the other way.

As Torrey and Gabriel are messaging each other, all of Torrey’s old feelings about come back. During their first meet-up, this is on page 83, Gabriel full on just says, “I just find myself wanting to know things about you.” Mary, this is queer behaviour. They’re in love, your honour. So, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when, and spoilers, Torrey and Gabriel end up getting together. Like, the book wasn’t even sly about the fact it was going to happen.

Torrey ends up going back home for a weekend to try and collect signatures, because one of his friends, Emery, has a lawyer friend who’s in love with her (slay) and tells him about the petition, and that if he gets enough support then he’ll be able to bring up an appeal. There is one point, when Torrey is back home where he takes Emery to the apiary and she uploads a photo of her in a beekeeper’s uniform with a bee pun in the caption, and Torrey’s response is, “That caption just gave me tuberculosis.” (page 170) And I just love lines like that. The world doesn’t need to be grounded in reality. Say dumb shit for the sake of saying it.

It’s pretty much a story about standing up against gentrification and the white people that think they can just walk all over people of colour because, Linda, they’re racist and think they are better than the people of colour, all while stealing their culture.

There’s this layout of information that is absolutely true about race. One example of it is on page 92, there’s this man – Richard, Dick – talking to Torrey about, well, he doesn’t so much say this outright, but suggests that he wants the land the apiary is on. And he spends the whole time talk at Torrey because, in his eyes, Torrey is just this poor black boy, and he is this white knight swooping in to help (and let’s not lie, take advantage of) Torrey by taking the land off his hands. The way he does it is basically, like I just said, he’s pretty much suggesting that he’s doing Torrey a favour by offering to buy the land. And I mean, the book then goes on to call out white folk on the fact that this sort of stuff happens because certain white people think they can just get away with it.

To close out this post, I think this book ended when it should have. I feel like a lot of YA books go one for longer than they need to, and in the just over 300 pages that this one clocks in at, it said, and did, everything it needed to, and did them all well. I’d highly recommend giving this a read if you haven’t already!

Okay, bye!