Love Nala and how real she is. Very relatable character. Her thoughts are honest and her experience in learning who she really is will resonate with readers.

I'm embarrassed to say that this is the first book I've read from Renée Watson, even though I've heard nothing but praise about This Side of Home and Piecing Me Together.

Watson is a skilled storyteller. This is a "small" book, focused on the growth and ordinary concerns of one girl in Harlem. But the specificity is expansive, and the prose is beautiful. What could be cloyingly trite (<i>just love yourself, fat girl!</i>) ends up feeling so nuanced and real on the page. I want to buy this because it's such an important mirror for the teens I work with in Philly, but it's also a GREAT window book - all readers will be able to identify, sympathize, cringe, laugh, and walk that line of bittersweet joy with Nala and the people around her.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the advanced review copy!

I went into this book thinking it would be about a teenage girl finding love for the first time but it's much more than that. It's about loving yourself so that you can love others as well. Nala is going through what every teenager and lets be honest adult goes through learning to love herself but also doubtful about what lies in her future. We all have been there and I like seeing that in a YA novel. Let's not pretend that teenagers are perfect. I also love the exploration of Blackness in this book especially the discussion on Black hair. Every Black girl goes through phases of exploration of their identity through their hair and to see that represented in the book makes me really happy. A Black teenage girl might read this and decide to try that new style she was unsure of it. I enjoyed the romance in the book but if you're looking for that to be the main focus it isn't really. I also loved the family dynamics in the book. It both shows that family can be complicated but also highlights the experience of a close Black family. Reminded me of my own experiences growing up and we need to see more happy Black families in books. Overall, I think this book is about Black women being confident both in themselves and their outward appearance. Self love is everything.

3.75 stars

This is a solid YA romance that really centers more on loving yourself than loving another person.

Nala is a charming main character with a cringey desire to be who others want her to be. While she appears to have a solid sense of self in the beginning of the novel, her interest in a new guy makes her second guess many of her current choices: her appearance, buying habits, and even eating habits. Quickly, Nala finds herself in a challenging situation: looking for love while losing herself.

While I really enjoyed Nala's story and growth here and appreciated that this was an efficient and smooth read, I wanted a bit more from the novel as a whole: more development of the ancillary characters, further exploration of some relationships, etc. This is a great read that I'll recommend to students, but I would have liked a bit more overall.

Im lowkey disappointed with this book. I was living for the cover and the idea of a plus size black girl learning to love herself. Also the book is set in NYC which I didn’t know initially. However Nala and every other female character were competing to see who was was more “not like other girls”. All of her relationships with her peers were super shallow. But mainly I was DEEPLY annoyed that Nalas whole personality was that she wasn’t “super woke”. How are you judging these other black kids for being activist and helping the black community but don’t even know how to do your own hair? Maybe u need more black friends in your life 🙄 CHILE ANYWAY....the writing was super juvenile to me and idk if it’s cuz I’m over ya romance or what. I also hate the whole “I’m gonna lie about who i am to get a guy to like me “ trope. It’s played out. And even though I understand where the author was going by making Nala start out like that, her growth didn’t feel believable. I was super interested to hear about her relationship with her mom because I have a similar experience, however we never even got the full story of how they had a falling out. Which was a huge turning point in Nalas life and is constantly being referenced. And because the romance was based on a stupid lies, I never got to enjoy the summer love story I wanted to read about.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury YA for an ARC!

It's the summer before her senior year and Nala wants to make it special with her cousin-sister-friend Imani. However, Imani has other plans with her other friends to volunteer with the youth group Inspire Harlem. It's at one of these events that Nala meets Tye and it's love at first sight. She starts to get to know him, but instead of being herself, Nala lies to Tye in order to impress him. Drama ensues.

I found the overall message heartfelt and important for young women, but I didn't really care about Nala. Especially as she gets deeper and deeper into her deceptions with Tye. She had so many opportunities to come clean that I couldn't wait until everything blew up in her face.

I'm sure this is a book many people will really enjoy, but the relationship aspect didn't work for me. I was also comparing this to Piecing Me Together, which is just fantastic, and Nala's story fell short of Jade's.

There's a lot to love about the plus sized girl who is just plus sized, it isn't something that gets called out on the street for or anything else. I really enjoyed the family dynamic as well, and the characters felt like real people. I think overall, there were a lot of elements that were touched on but never really resolved or even come to a sort of conclusion.

Always reflective and positive even when things don't go a character's way, Watson is the kind of go-to author for authenticity in character and relationships. And that rings true in this newest one too.

With a backdrop of teen activism, Nala isn't like others including her cousin-sister-friend and her group of friends and the new boy Tye that she meets because she's not in to the community organization but she's supportive of everyone else, until she lies a little because she wants to find love and thinks it's the way to get it. But the lies get harder to keep up with (it reminds me a little of Brandy Colbert's The Voting Booth with the relationship between Marva and her boyfriend before the new boy arrives!).

But what Nala focuses on is herself and gratitude and appreciation. I enjoyed her reflective lists. Her trying out different parts of herself whether it's her hair or music until she finds what feeds her soul. It's a deep book without preaching.

This book was so wonderful and timely. It really covered many topics like social justice, wanting to fit in, changing who you are to impress someone, tough relationships. It will really resonate with today's young adults.

Love Is a Revolution by Renee Watson is a cute and fun read that fans of contemporary YA novels are sure to enjoy!

It is the summer before Nala's senior year, and she wants to have the best summer ever. She especially would not mind finding love too. The first time she meets Tye, there are things about him she immediately loves and she is determined to get to know him better. Soon she finds herself not being completely honest with Tye, hoping that he will like her in return if she seems to be the perfect girl for him. It doesn't take long though before Nala's lies catch up to her, and she learns that falling in love with yourself is more important than making someone fall in love with you.

This book does a good job relating to teenagers and various issues with friends/family/love they go through. I really appreciated the lesson in learning to love yourself and I feel a lot of teens can take away something important from this book. I sometimes had a struggle with liking the main character, and I feel like the relationships Nala had with Imani and her mother were lacking something - they could have possibly been developed even a little bit more. But overall, this book is a nice and fast-paced read that I think lots of readers will like!

Renee Watson does it again - her ability to create relatable characters and situations brings readers back for every new book. The tension in Nala and Imani's cousins-sisters-friendship as well as in Nala's growing relationship with Tye (and the lies she tells along the way) both come to a head simultaneously, leaving Nala to sort out who SHE is rather than being who everyone else thinks she should be.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I really loved this book. The lead character, Nala, is on a journey of self discovery - from friends, to her hair style, to romantic relationships, to who she is. One of the thing I LOVED about this book, was the author's use of lists to help the reader know what was going on inside Nala's head. This not only showed her progress as a person, but helped the reader go on a small journey of their own. One of my favorite parts, was at the end, when Nala listed the 3 things that she loved about herself. It felt like that was a challenge to every reader to work on their own list as well.
This book was a quick read, the story was intertwined with many characters, and kept my interest. I would strongly recommend to any young adult.

3.5 stars
LOVE IS A REVOLUTION was such a relatable story following Nala, a girl who has been lukewarm toward activism and social reform, meeting a boy who is passionate about those things, and telling a few lies to make him fall for her. I don’t *love* the trope of miscommunication in relationships because I just spend the whole book waiting for the ball to drop, which isn’t much fun for me. While this book did have that trope, it was also about so much more. Rather than being focused on just the romance, we also see Nala prioritize time with her family (specifically her grandmother and the amazing crew at her grandmother’s living facility) and learn more about herself. Nala is Black and plus-sized, and these help build her character; she is confident in herself, but she has to learn to love herself (if that makes sense). I really related to Nala, specifically regarding the parts about social justice and activism—you know that it is important, but you don’t feel qualified to participate as much as you’d want. The romance wasn’t my favorite part of the book, mainly because I didn’t think the love interest was developed as well as he should have been. I also really struggled with the relationship between Imani and Nala at times, specifically in the later parts of the book. Overall though, this was a very relatable and encouraging story about a girl learning to love herself as she learns to love others.

I really enjoyed Love is a Revolution by Renee Watson. I found it propulsive and engaging.
I personally think the synopsis for the book says too much about what the book is about, so if you like going into a book not knowing too much, I recommend skipping the synopsis and going right in.

This book tackles the story of a young Black woman learning to come into her own as a teenager coming into adulthood. I appreciated the nuance and complexity of the characters. There are no perfect characters here, but people learning and growing. I would have loved this book to be around when I was a teenager.

Side note: There is a trope in the book that I normally find frustrating, and while it was frustrating at times here, I found it believable and enjoyed the book and story overall.

First, I always love to see both racial and body diversity in a book, especially with YA and a romance, which historically doesn't have the best reputation. But seeing that change is so great to see. This book takes place the summer before senior year and Nala loves making lists and dreams of changing her hair, hanging with friends and family, and falling in love on this break. Then, she meets a new boy in town, Tye, and she has a big crush on him. He's very involved with the same community organization as her cousin and so Nala tries whatever it takes to keep his attention even if it involves little fibs about also being a vegetarian and a volunteer because now he's interested in this fake version of her. These lies pile up and get bigger and bigger as they start to date and she keeps pretending, and it's almost like he tries to get her to be what's she's not and so, while there is a romantic love story, the main focus is on a self-love journey. There's such an authentic teen point of view and compelling language that makes me want to keep reading right off the bat. It's a quick read that I could polish off in a single sitting because I just couldn't put it down in the middle and I was just so invested. In the end, that was just so adorable and I loved how I was more than just a romantic love story, but rather a focus on her journey to self-acceptance and confidence.

Thank you netgalley for allowing me to read this early. I have never read anything by this author so i was excited when I was granted access. I loved this book. I enjoyed the plot, the characters & everything about this book! It was an interesting read with great underlying tones!

LOVE IS A REVOLUTION was an interesting book but a cute, quick read! I went in with no expectations as I am not familiar with the author, and found the story to be quite loving.

The characters are funny and relatable, their relationships go through the ups and downs of friendship, family, and love, and Nala is a great character to get to know. I really felt the tension with the family issues and the difficult discussions Nala had to make throughout the story and overall the writing was organic.

There were a lot of music lyrics that I kind of just skimmed through but the lists that Nala makes were an interesting touch. Overall, this was a nice palate-cleansing book with a quick turnaround, but I'm not sure if it is necessarily my style.

**One thing that really drew me away from the novel, and had nothing to do with the author, was the formatting of the ebook. I attempted to read the story on two different devices and each time the formatting was way off and just plain horrible. Chapter headers were broken between pages or paragraphs in the chapters, some chapters had no paragraph breaks while others randomly split mid-sentence, It was structurally unsound and really pulled my attention away from the storyline itself which is unfortunate.

“A story about loving yourself and embracing who you are, Love is a Revolution creates a profound and beautiful message.”

Cecelia Beckman, Sheaf & Ink

I loved Watson’s underlining message and how it connects perfectly with the title. A message about self-worth and love. Knowing there are different types of love. The first to be recognized and understood is the love you have for yourself. This was very insightful and meaningful. I can see how this would be particularly important for young people as they try and navigate their way through what can sometimes be described as a maelstrom of the high school experience. Once finding that love, which has no judgement or limitations or constraints, it is something worth fighting for.

Even though Watson creates this beautiful message there were aspects of her novel that were difficult to overlook. The relationship between Tye and Nala was confusing. It wasn’t clear when their relationship as a couple began. There was a point when Nala confronts Tye with the question of if they were together as a couple, but the build up to that moment and the moments thereafter felt forced.

Instant love can be a difficult trope, but when done well, readers can appreciate the connection, chemistry, and swoon worthy moments of the relationship over the course of the novel. However, in Love is a Revolution that wasn’t the case.

The foundation of Nala and Tye’s relationship was based on a lie. Further, there were scenes with these two that felt stagnant and had missed opportunities in fully addressing who these characters are and why they actually liked each other. Where Nala and Tye could have begun to fully explore their actual similarities in more depth and potentially lead them to a more solid framework while working out their differences. And with a predictable outcome, the ending, although sweet, felt contrived.

My only other concern was the writing itself. It felt at times mechanical. Where the text read more like a list of things happening rather than describing the interactions of the characters in a solidified way. At times, there wasn’t an even flow.

For example, there would be continuous dialogue, but no pause or reflection or reaction to what the characters were discussing. Similarly, when there are exposition passages, they feel again like a list of things surrounding them, but not alluding to how this affects the main character or how it drives the scene.

At the same time there were these thoughtful moments and scenes that were utterly inspiring. They stood out like a sunset with the most vibrant of hues, the image leaving a permanent imprint because of its beauty. When Nala begins to start her quest to impress Tye she starts with her hair.

She wants to go for a more natural look and when she takes all the steps to ensure the style, it doesn’t turn out the way she had hoped. It’s when a friend steps in to help without judgement that made for a very touching moment.

We see Nala vulnerable and embarrassed and her friend rescues her like a super hero, bringing her back to the safety of her room, going even further to help Nala with another hairstyle. One that she is comfortable with and makes her feel like she’s seen.

And one of the major accomplishments of the novel is how Watson cements the family bond both in the community and Nala’s own family. Nala’s relationship with her extended family is incredible.

Readers will be enveloped in their warmth and support for each other. Seeing this closeness with an enduring love for each other jumps off the page in ways that readers will root for Nala even with her strained relationship with her mother.

It doesn’t take away from the closeness we see between the entirety of her family. Plus the community of people that Nala interacts with at her Grandmother’s apartment complex is also heart-warming and big-hearted.

Love is a Revolution has a brilliantly realized main character and a message that readers will certainly appreciate and enjoy.

Happy Reading ̴ Cece

It's the summer between Nala's Junior and Senior year and she has three goals. 1. Find Love. 2. Discover her new hairstyle. 3. Spends hours and hours watching Netflix with her cousin-sister-friend Imani and their best friend Sadie. When Nala meets Tye, an incredibly handsome environmental conscientious social justice warrior, at an event for Imani's volunteer group she panics and exaggerates (lies) about herself to impress Tye. As the summer goes on and Nala and Tye's relationship grows she struggles with keeping her lies hidden and their repercussions.

I was all ready for a cute rom-com with this book, and it absolutely met those expectations, but also gave me a dose of self-reflection and revolutionary self-love that I wasn't expecting and found moving and refreshing. Towards the beginning, I was a little wary of how Nala resented the work of Inspire Harlem (which probably says more about me than the book), but I LOVED Nala's growth towards realizing that the small things that we do for people can have a powerful impact. Recommend for MS and US (maybe even 6th grade) students looking for some light rom-com realistic fiction

There were parts of this book where Nala really made me cringe and I didn't understand why she was making herself into something else just to impress Tye and I wondered when it would all blow up. And it does, but Nala does a good job of working on herself and her relationships with those around her.
But I think sometimes we all portray ourselves in a different light, of someone who we might want to be, a better version of ourselves.
I came to like Nala and I liked the body positivity throughout the novel. I liked her relationship with Imani, her Grandmother, her friend Sadie, and with Tye. I liked how they all moved differently but flowed together all tied together in some way.
I liked the ending too and would read more about these characters if Renee Watson ever decided to write more about them.

Thank you to the Publisher and NetGalley for this ARC!