I wish I had a book like this to read when I was a teenager. I love how it touched on so many important issues - feminism, racism, body shaming.
What a powerful and moving book!

*Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, however I did also purchase my own physical copy.

This book is so close to perfect for me that I can't help but give it a full five star rating! The two authors tackle so many topics brilliantly, from race and gender, to harassment and illness. The feminist themes were heavy-handed at times but I think that there are definitely people who talk like this and it was nice to see female characters who had flaws and issues to work through, but that held their beliefs dear and were willing to fight for them.

The poetry aspect of the novel added an interesting mixed media twist in addition to the illustrations towards the end of the book. The poems highlighted the messages that were being woven through the prose sections in a way that makes you understand the characters even more.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the subtle romantic aspects of the story and that the relationships did not always end up as expected. One of the male characters in the novel is someone who I would love to see a companion novel about; I loved his personality but his inclusion brought up important discussions around allyship that are not often spoken about.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a contemporary young adult novel that tackles important issues in a fun yet poignant way.

5 out of 5 stars!

This book had very unconvincing characters. No-one talks about like these characters do. Very disappointing as I was expecting so much more from this book.

I really enjoyed this book, it’s eye-opening, passionate and full of love.

It had me cheering, crying (on my lunch break, which was a little awkward), but most importantly it was really thought provoking.

“I resolve to be controversial like a girl,”

I loved the friendship between Jasmine and Chelsea, it isn’t perfect, they argue, but the basis of their friendship is that they are there for each other when it really matters and that’s the best thing.

But it’s not just the friendship between Jasmine and Chelsea either, I loved the dynamic of their group on a whole, and how not everything is black and white. There’s friendships in unlikely places, and falling outs where you don’t expect them either. And I really love the relationship between the girls and their families too. They all have strong bonds, even if they are not perfect, and I found that really relatable.

“I resolve to fight like a girl,”

But my favourite thing about this book was the interjections from ‘Write Like a Girl’ poetry, manifestos, articles and pieces of writing that turned this novel into a really great political read.

This is the best feminist novel I have read, and I came away from it feeling really inspired. The messages about loving yourself for who you are and not letting others take that away from you really felt prominent to me. And the fact that you should love yourself enough to know when to walk away from someone when you don’t think that they are treating you the way you feel like you should be treated.

“I resolve to show up like a girl, not stop like a girl, win like a girl,”

The relationship between Isaac and Jasmine is the type of true, respectful, caring relationship that we should see more of in YA. It’s believable and realistic and isn’t the type of relationship that will give readers unrealistic expectations about what relationships should be like. This is the type of relationship I’d like to have one day, and I also found it really relatable. They compliment each other really well, and help each other to find confidence.

But I found the writing just as inspirational as the political ideas. After I finished the book I was inspired to write a poem about living with a disability (which you can read here). And I really want to have a go at writing an erasure poem now.

“I resolve to stand up to sexism like a girl,”

But even though this book is really political, it isn’t boring. The plot helps to weave the whole thing together and the characters bring the political feminist ideas to life in a way I haven’t seen before. And I loved it!

I will leave you all with my favourite quote in the whole novel, and something I really want to try and live by (and to prove that I already have this quote as my Facebook bio, so I am reminded to do so):

“I resolve to be unstoppable and relentless like a girl,”

Thank you Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) and Netgalley for the review copy!

This book was really enjoyable but I don't think I'm quite the age group for it. But I will definitely get my younger sister to read it once she's a bit older as I think its a very important read.

This book had a super interesting premise but I just did not like the characters. The idea was mishandled and this made it really hard for me to want to read this.

Watch Us Rise had a lot of promise as a feminist YA story, but unfortunately it fell pretty flat for me. I was unable to connect with any of the characters, mostly because they were either lacking substance or completely irritating.

The main problem I had – and the problem that I think a lot of readers will have – is that the feminism in this book felt incredibly forced. It felt unnatural in that the characters were spouting out angry feminist rants at every opportunity. I’m quite disappointed by this, because I felt like the authors failed to portray teen feminists in a realistic way, and instead made them into what almost felt like caricatures or stereotypes.

Chelsea was someone that really grated on my nerves, as she had no personality other than being an angry feminist. She was also pretty crappy towards Jasmine, her best friend.

I’m very disappointed by Watch Us Rise, especially because I was hoping for something on par with The Nowhere Girls, I Stop Somewhere, or Moxie. This could have been better.

Sophie started out her month by reading Watch Us Rise, the story of two teenage girls, Jasmine and Chelsea, who attend a progressive high school in Washington Heights, New York City. Together, the girls found a women’s rights club which soon sees them become local stars as their blog posts about intersectional feminism find traction and get their fellow students talking. However, the blog also attracts trolls and the group is soon shut down by their principal. The girls refuse to be silenced and continue to campaign in earnest for their right to be heard.

While this book will no doubt be inspirational to many teens, Sophie found it hard to take seriously. Both Chelsea and Jasmine are so two-dimensional in their passion over women’s rights that they turn into little more than stereotypes and even the attempts to make them more three-dimensional (Jasmine’s father has cancer, Chelsea is a poet with a crush on a cute boy in her year) end up becoming caricature-ish. A large portion of the book was written in poem format through Chelsea’s work which did add interest, but more in an eye-rolling type of way.

The book ends up becoming laughable for just how unbelievably focused on social justice everything is. Even the girls’ high school is implausible for the way every student is made to attend an after-school social justice-themed club and every class is focused on social justice. And it really is EVERY class. The girls don’t have a regular science class, their units this semester include “The Use of Human Subjects in Medical Research”, and “The Environment, Climate Change, and Racism” while their gym class has them running out into their local area in pairs to explore the different kinds of stores they can see in affluent vs impoverished areas.

This is a book which had the potential to be great but ended up almost making a mockery of its subject through sheer heavy-handedness instead.

Watch Us Rise was provided to me by Netgalley, and I was drawn to it because the premise reminded me of The Hate U Give. I will say that this book doesn't have the same elegance that The Hate U Give had. I thought that Watch Us Rise got to be quite preachy at times, and it was a struggle to read it sometimes. I loved the relationships and friendships that were running throughout all the story and the plot, especially with the father-daughter relationship and the difficulties that were happening with that sub-plot.

I will say that alongside that I didn't quite understand the reasoning behind the illness that plagues Jasmine's life, purely because it didn't seem to make a huge difference to anything that happened in Watch Us Rise. I wanted there to be more of a catalyst effect for something to have changed because of the tragedy and the circumstances that surround that. I just feel that there was a lot of missed potential with this part of the story. Plus it felt as though it was brushed over a lot of the time and I just felt a little underwhelmed with how it was dealt with.

One thing that did really annoy me about this book was how preachy it was at time. It made me cringe and I think it disconnected me from the story and the characters. Now that isn't to say that I'm not onboard with everything this book is trying to do, I just think it goes about it the wrong way. I don't know whether Watch Us Rise has the intended effect because personally I think it misses the mark a little. I don't know if people reading this book would be more put off with the story than understanding of where it was coming from.

I really wanted to love Watch Us Rise and I really wanted to get on board with what they were trying to do. But for me as a reader I just felt a huge disconnect with the characters and the storyline. There was a lot of potential within the story but I feel it was missed in the attempt to make this book as "feminist" as possible. I would have preferred for there to have been more development with the characters and the story and have less preaching moments.

I don't think I would recommend Watch Us Rise, I think if you were looking for a political read The Hate U Give is definitely a better read. I think that this book is unfortunately a little on the immature side and it overreached in ways that didn't have the development to back it up.

Lets chat

Would Watch Us Rise be the type of book you would read? Let me know in the comments.

A great premise, but sadly fell a little flat for me. I love this genre and the characters seemed so intriguing, but it just didn't hit the spot for me.

An emotional and engaging YA book with strong feminist themes of empowerment and activism, this was a delight.
Watch Us Rise is the story of Chelsea and Jasmine, two students at a progressive high school in New York, and their friends Isaac and Nadine. As part of the progressive ethos of the school, the students must take part in after school clubs, Jasmine is involved in the drama ensemble and Chelsea in the poetry club. When events in the school suggest that it may not be as progressive as it thinks, the two girls decide to form a club of their own, focused on women's rights. The blog that they produce as part of the club, Write like a Girl, soon has the whole school buzzing ,though not all the attention is positive. The authors use the blog extremely effectively in the book, allowing them to seamlessly incorporate poetry, opinion pieces and feminist biographies into the book without taking away from the narrative flow. As for that narrative flow, this book will make you want to stand up and cheer,but also break down and cry. Jasmine is dealing with the terminal diagnosis of her father, the constant pressure to lose weight from her mother, and the realization that she may like Isaac as more than a friend, while Chelsea's passion and volatility gets her into trouble, and she finds herself in a love triangle.
At first I was worried that the tone of the book would be too "preachy" for want of a better term, but that was soon forgotten as I found my self rooting for these two young women in their struggles with racism, body image, teenage crushes and family problems. While the book does tackle several very important issues really well, I think the one that stood out to me most was that of image, and particularly the media's portrayal of what girls and women ( of all races ) should look and behave like. I liked that both girls were flawed, sometimes making poor decisions, because this made them not only more real but also more relatable. The book could and should spark conversations, it is something I would like to see in every school and library, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Okay so female empowerment books are either a love or hate type of books for me so I was a little wary of reading this, but it far exceeded my expectations! I absolutely loved this book!

I cannot explain how many emotions I went through reading this book, I was so pumped and excited and so mad at some things that happened, and I cried and laughed. Basically this book will leave you an emotional mess, but I loved it! One of the things I loved about this book was that it dealt with intersectional feminism. The main issue I have with feminist books is that being a South Asian Muslim woman, I don’t feel like it represents me and I can’t often relate to it. So reading this book was refreshing as I felt connected and I related to so many things they spoke about!

This book deals with sexism, racism, fatphobia, racism, slut shaming, sexual harassment and ableism to name a few. And I felt that they were portrayed realistically and I loved how they were handled. It deals with serious and heavy topics but it never felt like it was too much for me because the way the book is written makes it easier to take in everything. There are blog posts, playlists, and poetry written by both Chelsea, Jasmine and Nadine and artwork drawn by Isaac. I loved that these were included as it makes it more relatable to teens and young adults. They also spoke about real women throughout history and I loved that they were included and that they were from different cultures and backgrounds and from a wide range of fields. It was so inclusive and I wish that more books included women from different cultures.

I adored the friendship between Jasmine and Chelsea, they have such a wonderful friendship and it was realistic and not like a perfect friendship. They are supportive and help each other but they do sometimes take things for granted. For example, Chelsea has t-shirts made but doesn’t take into account that Jasmine will not be able to wear the sizes she buys as Jasmine needs plus size. I liked how Jasmine spoke to her about it and how it made her feel and that Chelsea realised her mistake. Both Jasmine and Chelsea have a lot to deal with outside of fighting for women’s rights and it really made their characters fully fleshed out.

The two girls start their own club in school because of the way they are treated in the clubs they are previously in. Jasmine has to deal with fat shaming and racism and Chelsea is sick of the only poetry being discussed is written by white men. They have to overcome many obstacles to be allowed to continue their club including having to deal with their principal who doesn’t really understand what they are trying to achieve and has quite misogynistic views despite being in charge of a school known for social justice. It was really great to see them grow and develop and realise the mistake they made in trying to get their point across and learnt to express themselves in a better way. I also loved the adults. especially women, who helped them and supported them in what they were trying to achieve.

There was so many moments in this book that I had to highlight as they discussed such important things that are relevant to today’s society and I really liked how well explained everything was so that even if you aren’t familiar with the topic of intersectional feminism it’s easy to understand. I highly recommend this book and hope you find it as enlightening and beneficial as I did.

Watch Us Rise is an insightful and empowering feminist novel about two friends, Jasmine and Chelsea, who set out to change the world with their art-activism.


Watch Us Rise confronts many conversations that too many forms of media are afraid to talk about; feminism, racism, sizeism/fatphobia, ableism and more. After Chelsea and Jasmine discover that their supposedly liberal High School falls into the trap of many of these prejudices, and fails to support those victimised on the school grounds, they decide to rise up against it and create a womanist group where they share their activist art on their blog, Write Like A Girl. I don't think I have highlighted so many passages in a novel before and it was clear that both Watson and Hagan knew what they were talking about in a lot of depth. It makes me sad to think about why these passages might be so insightful and the answer can only be that they must have faced adversities such as this themselves.

I would have liked some of the characters to be a little bit more fleshed out and I often forgot that Nadine existed. However, Chelsea and Jasmine are incredible protagonists. Chelsea, a white girl who is incredibly feminist, constantly questioning and calling people out on their sexist and problematic remarks. Jasmine is a plus sized black girl who's father is dying from cancer. The novel follows them throughout this difficult time in Jasmine's life as she tries to navigate Junior year in High School while being constantly distracted by her father's illness. Chelsea, her best friend, tries to be there for her, but sometimes doesn't know the best way to support her friend. There's a fantastic passage where Chelsea buys T-Shirts for a protest and unknowingly disregards the idea that Jasmine won't fit into any of the T-Shirts she has bought. Being plus sized myself this is often an idea I have encountered and it has made me uncomfortable in the past when friends of mine have insisted that I would fit into x size T-Shirt. The emotion and frustration Jasmine feels in this moment is so real and raw, while highlighting the fact that even people like Chelsea, who everyone would see as the pinnacle of feminism, makes mistakes. This book is true, this book is real, this book is human.

My only problem with this novel was that the only openly LGBT+ character was Ms Lucas and she barely shows up in the novel. In fact, for most of the story I forgot that she existed. Furthermore, the fact that she is LGBT feels like a throwaway comment and LGBT+ issues are not discussed for the rest of the novel. When we think about how detailed and powerful the messages and activism in this book are I think its significant that the conversation about LGBT+ issues in feminism were basically ignored. The LGBT+ representation in this book felt like an afterthought, and honestly that's just not good enough.

I barely have a bad word to say about this novel and I urge every single one of you to preorder this novel. You won't regret picking up this wonderful story, an ode to feminism, sprinkled with a collection of powerful poems and articles.

*REVIEW ON MY BLOG TO COME SOON*

A stirring and unputdownable read about what it means to be a woman today. Perfect for fans of The Hate U Give and Moxie.

Throughout this book is a combination of writing and poetry, and that works so well. The poems fit in perfectly throughout this book and really allows for the story to grow in a unique and brilliant way. The writing style in this book gives these characters, well, more character and gives you greater insight and depth to the people Hagan and Watson create.

The plot throughout this book though really is so empowering for the characters. I like that the romance is subtle in this book as it allows for the voices of the young women in this book to be loud and allows for this book to have such a brilliant and fierce ending that just made me sit there and smile and want to punch the air for them as I just felt so happy for them all.

A really great debut from these two fantastic writers, if you want a book that makes you feel like you could start a revolution in your living room, this is the book for you.

Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy.

I'm going against the tide of other reviews here but this book was just too much. It almost reads as a parody of social justice discourse.

The novel follows the stories of Chelsea and Jasmine, two intersectional teenage feminists living in New York City. These two young women must exist in a state of constant mental exhaustion as they find issue with almost every single thing in the world around them.

At their school every student has to join a social justice club and even the Science class is officially the 'Science of Social Justice'. I'm no expert on the American education system but I'm guessing that public schools are bound to some kind of local or State standards? Not this school. Forget Covalent Bonds or the Theory of Relativity, they are going to study the Use of Human Subjects in Medical Research and Climate Change and Racism instead. Good luck on the SATs I guess.

The villain is a pretty white girl. The issues are shoehorned in with all the subtlety of a 6ft tall Peacock playing the Tuba. It's simply too much for one book to try and cover this many issues without it coming across as unrealistic and frankly absurd.

I actually felt drained reading this book. As a proud intersectional feminist who cares passionately about equity and social justice I didn't feel inspired, I felt like these important issues ended up as a bit of a joke. The poetry was quite good though. Really sorry, just not for me.

I literally cannot find fault with this book. It's amazing.
There are so many things I loved about this book: the mixed media storytelling featuring blog posts, illustrations, playlists, as well as the perspectives switching between the two main characters Chelsea and Jasmine.
I also the poetry! It's not something I usually relate to or enjoy but good god were these deep and powerful.
So many topics were handled in this novel and yet all were done so well.
The characters were all great. I love Chelsea and Jasmine who are both so passionate in what they believe in and yet also flawed. Chelsea is a loud and outspoken feminist but she doesn't understand everything and she still has a lot to learn and become aware of. I thought this was a very important aspect to show.
I will recommending this book to everyone I know. I need a physical copy for my shelf!

I want to thank Netgalley for providing me with an arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was such an amazing book I finished it in one sitting.
It tackles important issues like racism and obesity as well as being an amazing feminist book I got serious moxie vibes!
It’s account of these characters fighting back against the injustices they face to make sure there voices are heard.
This book was incredibly written and honestly made me think long and hard about these issues in today’s society.
I loved that it had two narrators Chelsea and jasmine so we could see two different perspectives.

Overall this book was engaging and thought provoking and I really enjoyed it.
The only thing I didn’t like was meg I felt she was just a stereotypical mean girl.
I gave it 4 stars.

I love reading about activism and feminism. Jasmine is a fantastic character, it takes a lot to call out your friends when they don't acknowledge parts of you and the intersections of your life. I cried when Jasmine's dad died because my dad also died of cancer when I was a teenager. It hit me hard. Chelsea was an annoying character at times but I liked her in the end. I'm glad she stood up for herself and wouldn't let anyone treat her like who she is isn't good enough. Overall I liked this book and would recommend it to teenagers who want to stand up and fight for something.