Really well written to the point I sometimes forgot I was reading a memoir and not a fiction book. I always question the truth of memoirs so I really appreciate the author's note in the beginning about how this is just one side of the story, from one person's memory. Considering this is the memoir of a Pulse survivor, I expected some heavy content but I do wish there was a content warning for some other events that occurred.

Brandon J. Wolf has given readers a gift with his heartfelt memoir. There are so many "what if" questions that arise here: what if that one family member had not passed away, what if he hadn't had to struggle so much, what if that horrific shooting never happened? But the author doesn't dwell in these questions; he has shown again--and again--in ways he should never had to that he preservers. And he's determined to help make things better for his communities.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I was scared to read this book. I lived in Orlando during the time when Pulse happened, and I did a lot of work in the community in the wake of Pulse, so I feel intimately connected to what happened that night. Also, my wife & several friends of mine know the author. That said, I am SO glad I got over my fear and read this book. It was such a lovely tribute to Drew & Juan, and also a beautiful examination of a person's inner landscape. I have always been so impressed by Brandon's speaking and advocacy, and it felt like a special gift to be able to explore the person behind that persona.

What poignant and beautifully written memoir. Brandon J. Wolf survived the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in Orlando, Fl. in 2016. This book focuses on the lead up to the massacre, and the aftermath of his trauma and healing process. He also talks about his mother's death when he was an adolescent and being sexually assaulted in his early '20s. This young man has been through multiple traumas and made it through to tell his story. His prose is stunning and heartfelt. This book mainly talks about his struggle with coming to terms with his sexuality and being biracial. He's had to overcome a lot. He felt like an outsider growing up. I appreciate his honesty. It takes courage to be who you truly are. I wish Brandon all the happiness in the world. Highly recommended!

While I don’t want to negate someone’s first hand experience, this was not well written. The author’s negative views of medical doctors was a turn off

As a queer Orlando native, Pulse is a painful memory that lingers in the back of my mind every time I enter a majority queer space. I could feel tension in my shoulders and stomach as Brandon described the events leading up to the shooting. It was all so normal, which was the worst part. Nobody woke up that day expecting to endure a horrible, violent event that would change their lives and a community forever. Does anyone?

Brandon’s prose is familiar, like you’re speaking with a friend, and his intimate understanding of grief speaks to my own. His frustration is particularly relevant if you’ve ever been involved in Florida politics. I felt like the timeline got a bit muddled at times as we dove between the past and the present; however, regardless of where we were in his story, you could feel the love he had for Drew and Juan through his words alone.

The point of the book, or at least what I took away from it, is that you have to give yourself permission to keep living. It’s a compelling, well paced memoir that never loses sight of hope and will certainly find its niche among readers like me.

This book was very close to home for me. A very well written memoir with excellent prose. The themes and thoughts flowed amazingly from chapter to chapter. I cried a few times and really had a chance to think about these experiences on a deep level. Thank you for sharing your story, and this is definitely a memoir near and dear to my heart. Brandon tackled grief, friendship and forgiveness in an amazingly well crafted book! 5/5

Moving and well-written memoire of a survivor of the horrific Pulse Nightclub terrorist attack. Wolf takes us through his back and after story, and delivers lively portraits of friends lost in the shooting, bringing humanity to the victims of the tragedy. One may not agree with his conclusion that Islamic extremism is a tool used by white cis-gender males to continue to divide the oppressed, but the honesty of the narrative makes for compelling reading.

I received a review copy of this book via NetGalley and Little A in exchange for an honest review.

This book was both honest and heartbreaking.
Wolf uses this platform to speak his truth and share parts of his life with the reader in order to fully immerse yourself in his life.

From the very first chapter I was enamoured with Wolf. His intelligence and personality shone through in this memoir and I felt as though I knew him personally.

Opening with a detailed recount into his childhood, the reader gets to know Wolf as a young child as he navigates and transitions from loosing his mother to feeling like an outsider in his own family. As we read on we grow with Wolf as he discovers his sexuality and tries to find his place within the world.

Wolf also goes through many traumatic events within his childhood and also adolescence. We all remember the Pulse Nightclub shooting of June 2016 and the tragedy surrounding it. Within this memoir, we dive in head first, reliving the trauma and grief through Wolf. We also see how the trauma lives on, but how Wolf takes this awful event and advocates for those who experienced the shooting but also those who have been in similar situations.

This book was extremely eye opening and is written beautifully.
I would recommend this memoir to anyone!

Trigger Warnings: Racism, Homophobia, and Gun Violence.

In this memoir by @brandonjwolf which have recollections of past events that have helped pave the way for a brighter future one small step at a time.

Every person has their own journey in life and to often people are judged without being known. The memoir starts by telling the history of sad events that begin in high school and ending around the tragedy in 2016 at Pulse nightclub in Orlando and what has happened since. The memoir brings feelings up that I can only speak on for myself, the sadness of being picked on for who you are, but also helped reflect on relationships within my own life. The part I liked in book was how sometimes being in the community you can build your own family when not accepted by one’s own. Another part I related to was the dating life/scene, although I’m from a smaller country not much is different in the outer world. The memoir definitely brings forth emotions of sadness and there were moments where I choked up trying to wrap my head around the events that took place (I will never fully understand) but then a the end brings hope and clarity and how to move forward. Beautifully written

If you want to know more about what Brandon and his team are upto check out @thedruprojectorg for more information.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @netgalley for allowing me to review this memoir.
A Place for Us is available on @amazonkindle from the 1st of July 2023.

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This book was incredibly inspirational, heartbreaking, and eye opening.
Wolf captures the events and aftermath of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in details that make your heart ache in pain, but that is not what makes the book. A Place for Us beautifully captures the LGBTQ community and the struggles they face to find a place to be themselves. Wolf shares his own struggles and the struggles of those around him to show why Pulse was once a safe haven for them and why the aftermath of the tragedy tore deep.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

At times cheesy, this book had all the elements of an incredible memoir, but failed to draw the threads of themes of community and identity together into one cohesive story.

Brandon Wolf, the author of A Place for Us, is both queer and black, a combination that made growing up extremely difficult and challenging. Judging by his writing, he is also intelligent, funny, shy and brutally honest. Thank goodness, there are places like Pulse Nightclub where he could go to unashamedly be himself, a place he could call his own, a safe haven. Until the unspeakable happened.

Brandon survived the horrific, traumatic event, but he lost his best friend, Drew, and other friends in the shooting. After a period of grief, he turned to activism in the hopes of preventing this sort of tragedy from ever happening again. We should all be sickened and infuriated by our politicians’ selfish needs for reelection rather than actually enacting any useful gun legislation, and he set about trying to change that through activism and advocating for change himself.

This isn’t a story that only encompasses the Pulse Nightclub tragedy. It is also about racism, homophobia, inequality, mass shootings that continuously fail to yield any meaningful laws, and the injustices endured by anyone who is perceived as different. Our country is divided and our humanity endangered, and it needs to stop. In writing this book, Brandon not only wants to memorialize his friends, Drew and Juan, but he wants to shine a light on the victims rather than the terrorist. And in doing so, I hope he’s been able to assuage his survivor’s guilt and show the world that love is love.

I give this book 4 stars and applaud the author for his vulnerability in writing his memoir. Thank you NetGalley and Little A Publishers for the ARC.

Great read. Loved the honesty.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

Wolf survived the Orlando nightclub shooting, but that's not where he starts the story: he opens the book in his childhood in Oregon, when he lost his mother at a young age. This would be a devastating and formative loss for almost any child, but for Wolf it came with an extra complication—he already felt "other", and without his mother by his side it was a long, long time before he could truly feel that he had people in his corner, people who understood him.

It's roughly a third of the book in before Pulse is even mentioned, and that's intentional: the shooting was the catalyst for this book and a catalyst in Wolf's life, but it was representative of a great deal more than that. Wolf describes growing up knowing exactly how many other students in his school were Black, knowing that his white family wouldn't stand up against racial or homophobic slurs, and constantly needing to watch his back, because his school and his town were not safe places to be if you were different. (That Pulse was something representative of a safe space—and of chosen family—is not a new spin, and if you've read a think piece or two this won't come as new information. But Wolf doesn't belabour the point about Pulse here, focusing instead on the people who were his chosen family.)

I'm grateful that the book focuses less on what happened and who committed this violence and more on who and what were lost, because Wolf is right: the media conversation so quickly turns to othering and blame. Thoughts and prayers. The human stories get lost, and nothing changes. That said, on the subject of the media, not long before I read this (in December 2022), the New York Times reported that gun violence had become the leading cause of death for children in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and other causes for the first time. The Orlando victims didn't include children, but this book is still incredibly timely. Shootings have gone up, not down, and there have been so many mass murders that they blur together even when I look them up individually. (Tell me there is a systemic problem without telling me there is a systemic problem.)

This hovers somewhere between three and four stars for me. The story and timeline felt clearest in the first two thirds, and the writing sometimes felt unnecessarily dramatic—the material is dramatic enough not to need the flourishes. But I'm also reading this thinking "why is this the first memoir about this that I've seen?" Surely there have been others—it's been more than six years. But the people affected by this shooting tended to be in doubly marginalised groups (in many cases queer and Latinx; Wolf is queer and Black), and those aren't voices that are often amplified in the US. It's appalling that there is even a mass-shooting literature, but...there is, and Wolf's is a necessary voice in that literature.

Everyone needs a place where they belong and in his memoir Brandon Wolf speaks about the difficulties of growing up gay. He finds happiness and a family in Orlando until the PULSE massacre. He struggles with imposter and survivor guilt but overcomes by becoming an advocate for the LBGTG+ communities. He’s honest, courageous and authentic in telling his story.

Honest, vulnerable, and timely.
Honest, and unflinching look at grief in its many forms and at the sometimes-ridiculous aspects of growing up and becoming more than we once were.
Vulnerable, the author reveals a lot of fragile moments besides the big ones the small very human moments that we can all relate to even though our egos might not let us share, with every vulnerable moment I had this parental urge to protect Brandon so for me it made the whole reading experience very emotional, seriously, I cried at least 4 times.
Timely, we have grown so accustomed to violence on mass market scale that it's easy to forget that behind every act are lives that are as rich and full as ours, there is so much of it we simply cannot contain all that pain or even the awareness of it but it's important that we remind ourselves of it occasionally be it just so we don't lose sight of what and especially WHO we stand to lose if we don’t do anything to curb the currently growing climate of hatred.