Juliet Takes a Breath is a refreshing and unflinchingly honest tale of identity
With its refreshing and unflinchingly honest narrative, Juliet Takes a Breath offers a much-needed take on identity in a world that seems hellbent on ridding people of all the things that make them who they are.
Given the target audience of the young adult genre, there are plenty of novels that tackle the concept of figuring out your identity, though few do so with as much zeal and unflinching honesty as Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes a Breath. A must-read for anyone considering their own place in the world in terms of race, gender, and sexuality — or for anyone looking to educate themselves on new perspectives — this novel tackles more than a few serious topics with humor and charm.
The story opens with Juliet, a 19-year-old college student who has decided to come out as a lesbian to her parents before leaving the Bronx and pursuing a summer internship in Portland, Oregon. Her parents don’t take the news as poorly as they could, but they don’t exactly handle it well either. The insistence that this is simply a phase Juliet’s going through is something that grates at her throughout the story, and it’s sadly something that many members of the LGBTQ+ community can relate to.
And with that bitter taste in her mouth, Juliet heads off to Portland to work alongside the author that opened her eyes to feminism and sexuality: Harlowe Brisbane. Unfortunately, meeting your heroes isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, and Juliet quickly discovers that Harlowe’s “white lady feminism” may not be the same as her own feminism.
As the story continues, Juliet navigates what it means to be a woman of color and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, all the while confronting other people’s biases and privilege. And the things Juliet discovers serve as important lessons for those reading her journey, revealing some eye-opening truths about the society we all live in.
Juliet’s narrative also serves as a coming-of-age story, and it’s a refreshing one in the sense that it doesn’t take the focus off of her. Too many novels show their heroines coming of age in another person’s arms, but the lesson of Juliet Takes a Breath is that she needs to find her own voice and write her own story. No one is going to do it for her.
Juliet Takes a Breath is full of quirkiness (it’s set in Portland, after all), and that charm enables it to explore deeper issues in a way that’s engaging and truly makes the readers care about the novel’s characters — even though all of them are far from perfect. Rivera’s novel doesn’t paint the world in black and white strokes, but she finds that grey middle area that the world so commonly falls into and digs right in. And that’s exactly what makes this release so special (and a must-read for anyone looking for a contemporary story this fall).
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