Watch as Juliet Takes a Breath and figures herself out

 

So, today I’m talking about a book that I think has been sat on my shelf for a little while, and that’s Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera. I think I ended up picking this up from a queer bookshop relatively near me. I say relatively, because there isn’t a single bookshop I would consider to be near me, like if public transport and traffic was on my side, the closest is maybe 20/25 minutes away.

The blurb says that Juliet’s head is spinning with questions. Will her beautiful, chaotic Puerto Rican family still love her when they found out she’s gay? Will an internship with her favourite author help her understand what kind of feminist she wants to be? Any why won’t her girlfriend return her calls? In a summer full of queer dance parties, a fling with a motorcycling librarian and intense exploration of sexuality, feminism and identity, Juliet’s about to learn what it means to really come out – to the world, to her family, to herself.

The book opens on a preface where Juliet is writing a letter to her favourite author in 2003 and she’s musing over feminism, saying she’s new to it. I will say, I was a little unsure about when the whole book was set for a moment, because in chapter 1, Juliet is going home, and before I say what I’m going to say, I loved the description of her neighbourhood in the Bronx. The word choices, and the choices of what was described, made the place seem like it was alive. It made it seem like it was a place to be lived in and a community. So, I loved that, but for what got me as to why I didn’t really know when this was set, she’s going home, and the book mentions she gets a call on her cell phone, and I think I would have liked some specification, like had there been a specific model mentioned, then I could have been okay. And it wasn’t like a specific brand couldn’t have been mentioned, because Twix and Mars get mentioned. So, while I did eventually realise that it probably was still 2003, I think it was just because the specific style or model wasn’t mentioned, that’s what threw me off.

Still, by the end of the first chapter, Juliet has come out to her family at the dinner table. There are a myriad of reactions to it. Some of them are okay with it, but her mum doesn’t take it very well. She ends up getting up and locking herself in her bedroom and not talking to Juliet until Juliet is leaving for her internship in Portland the next morning. The second chapter is a short little one, it’s literally just Juliet being taken to the airport and kind of wondering why her girlfriend, Lainie hasn’t contacted her back yet. Then chapter three has her arriving in Oregon and meeting Harlowe, the author of the book that Juliet loves, and the author she wrote to in the preface.

Juliet ends up getting to Portland and in a plot twist that I think no one saw coming, she finds Portland to be very different to the Bronx. (Side note, I am Vivica Westwood-Mugler and we are out in the projects, in the middle of the Bronx, in the middle of the night.) She gets on a bus and she’s just not used to people having BO. She’s also just not used to how liberal things are with Harlowe. She gets asked her pronouns and how she identifies by Harlowe’s, I think, lover, Phen, and Juliet mentions to the reader that things like that aren’t something that she’d ever really thought about and surmises that, “She’s just Juliet”. Then even saying that, you realise that Juliet doesn’t know shit about shit. I definitely got the vibe that she was the kind of person that was good in her home era, but once she was taken out of it, she was majorly rattled and realised that she wasn’t as strong as she thought. Very much a big fish in a little pond kind of scenario.

Now since this book is a coming-of-age one, there’s not a lot going on in it. I mean that in the sense of a plot, not in general, because obviously things happen, or there wouldn’t be a book in the first place. To be honest, that is the case of coming-of-age things, shockingly. There’s this series I’m watching (I don’t know whether it’ll have finished by the time this post comes out) called My Only 12% and that’s a coming-of-age series. The “plot”, if you can call it that, is these two neighbours and childhood best friends growing up and dealing with some of the other things that come with growing up. This book is sort of similar in that instance. I’ve mentioned it briefly, but Juliet is just going about her life, dealing with comes her way. So, it is coming of age, even though Juliet is post-college.

There was this almost odd duality of Juliet throughout the book where you see her trying so hard to get in contact with Lainie and she just can’t, but at the same time she’s learning about the power that women, and especially queer women of colour, have and should have. So, while she was so desperately trying to get in contact with her girlfriend, she’s also learning how strong of a person she truly can be, and it was this very weird power struggle going on inside of her.

I will say, the bit on the blurb where it mentions a summer “full of queer dance parties”, I wouldn’t say this book was full of them. I remember one. A brief one at that, too. I do also feel as though that was sort of a recurring theme throughout the book, where sometimes the narrator would just tell us that someone did something, something that would seem pretty important, almost like how you’d see in maybe a teen drama or coming-of-age movie. It's that moment where you see the protagonist standing and they just tell you that things happen. Those moments felt like missed opportunities, we could have been shown these things happenings and then had Juliet’s inner monologue of what she thought of them, but instead, we were just told them.

Overall, it was a fine read. Nothing too amazing, but nothing bad. However, for me, when reading about someone who isn’t like you (I’m not a queer woman of colour, like Juliet), there’s only a limited amount of connection I can make to them and only so much relatability I can find. So, while I enjoyed getting to see someone in a different world than mine discover themselves, there was only so much relatability to be found. And, again, I do think there were a few bits that did just feel a bit hollow as I read them. To be 100% honest, I know that I’m not going to read this book again. It wasn’t bad, it was just… kind of there.

Okay, bye!