i received an arc from netgalley and i will say this wasn’t what i expected. i thought it was going to be solely about jade and her journey through grief as a black queer woman, but there were multiple povs. the language wasn’t the most mature and the plot fell short of what the description painted. overall, great representation but it wasn’t my favorite read.

Unfortunately I ended up DNFing this book. The premise was really well constructed and was written in a way that really grabbed my attention, but the book itself fell short for me.

I loved the LGBTQ+ representation as always, as well as reading a book with a Jamaican main character - I enjoy diversifying my reading as much as possible and reading a book with a queer black character was perfect! However I just didn’t connected properly to the writing style and I think the slow pace of the book contributed to that, as well as finding myself confused and lost within the plot and POVs.

But I do absolutely love the cover - it is beautiful!!

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for this eARC in return for an honest review.

I fell asleep last night with about 30 pages left so my review is a day later than planned but at least it gets one eventually.

“Jade is a Twisted Green” is a book about Jade, a queer, black Canadian young woman as we follow her personal growth following the death of her sister. It’s told through multiple POVs and my favourite had to be Amethyst’s, though the fact she put milk in peppermint tea ?!?! disgraceful, I don’t think I can support Amethyst’s choices anymore they’re automatically invalid to me now.

Some of the lines in this book are incredibly poetic, while others are written in, what would be considered less poetic, Jamaican Patois. This juxtaposition of language drives home the difficulty for Jade and many of her friends to feel that they “fit in” as immigrants in Toronto who have to navigate their young adulthood in the white centric spaces of the arts and the city’s spaces in general.

At first I felt that the book was moving slowly but that’s part of the joys of it, the slower feeling pace means you have time to delve into the minds of these characters and their emotions, watching Jade continue to grieve from the inside and learning about Tay’s immigration to Canada and learning about her family.

This book is really a beautiful exploration of identity and queerness as a Black woman throughout a variety of scenarios and locations.

I’m so glad I got to read this, I feel like I’m in a bit of an echo chamber with what I read so to read a book from a voice that I don’t usually read has made me really want to widen the diversity of the books I read and try and open myself up to new stories and voices.

I DNFed this one. The writing style just didn’t work for me. Definitely recommend it for fans of Honey Girl!

TW: sexual assault

I really wanted to enjoy Jade is a Twisted Green. The plot really interested me; Jade, a queer first- generation Jamaican woman living in Canada tries to get her life back on track after the death of her twin sister. After being compared to Queenie (a novel that I absolutely loved), I was excited to read the book!

However, I found it quite disappointing. The novel only partly focused on Jade but kept on jumping into the backstories of peripheral characters throughout the first half, so I personally felt that I didn’t connect much with Jade. This may also be because of my experience as a woman of Caribbean heritage living in the UK… I just expected that I would have connected more.

The storyline was slow and uneventful and focussed more on the past of characters that didn’t contribute much to the story. Moreover, the random way in which the characters slipped into Patois was very jarring and strange.

Frankly, I can’t really see why it has been compared to Queenie; there was no humour, the peripheral characters didn’t add much, and the storyline was unexciting.

Jade is a Twisted Green is an insightful, deeply personal novel about a queer Black woman experiencing grief and early adulthood. While the book was sometimes confusing based on various POVs, time jumps, all of those issues could be fixed with clearer formatting. Most of the characters served a larger purpose, although I did occasionally forget who the main character was. A lot of the secondary characters were well-rounded and served both their own goals as well as advancing Jade along.

This book was a very slow read, and the only part I really enjoyed was after the trip to Atlanta and Jade's solo trip at the conclusion of the trip. I think this might've been intentional as Atlanta is when Jade really confronts her grief and is able to move on from it.

I did enjoy the messy sapphics and how the conclusion was very ambiguous on the romantic front. The main couple of Jade and Tay were messy, but you understood their history and level of connection to each other.

Overall, this book was fine. It could do with some refinement in formatting to clarify POVs, as well as some editing of unnecessary POVs, but ultimately the story was a beautiful reflection of a young queer black woman and her relationship with Toronto, grief, and love.

Again this is a book that took me a while to get into but I did end up enjoying it! (and the cover is beautiful!)

It is an important story about queer black woman in today's society.

I did find the multiple points of view very confusing and I feel like this could have been simplified and this would enhance the enjoyment of reading this book.

Jade is in her early twenties and dealing with the grief of losing her twin sister, whilst also tackling her sexuality and identity. We go through the ups and downs with Jade and follow how she starts to heal herself spiritually and get a handle on her grief.

This is a slow burner, there are timeline jumps, significant events and multiple POVs to contend with too so it takes a while for the story to get going. Having said that, I really enjoyed reading this book. I think it could have been longer with more of a deep dive into some of the characters we have a chapter of but other than that, it’s a really well written, coming of age book that handles many difficult subjects.

I would recommend.

Jade has to deal with the loss of her sister and consequently the end of her relationship with her girlfriend Tayja during her last year of high school.

At 24, Jade is pretty lonely and doesn't really know where to go in life. That's when Tayja reaches out to her, hoping to reconnect. Jade's ex-boyfriend Morgan and her best friend Amethyst also play significant roles in the story. All of them have Jamaican heritage and have chapters dedicated to their stories.

The central themes of loss, love and friendship are explored through multiple points of view and different moments in time. Although, I would have preferred if the story had been a bit more focused on Jade, as she is the main character.

A good coming of age story!

Jade Is a Twisted Green drew me in with its cover art and description. Being from the west end of Toronto myself, I was excited to read a book set in my city, and it did have so many references to different locations and events that happen here!

Jade is a 24 year old, queer Jamaican woman, dealing with the loss of her twin sister while trying to grow into and find herself. Unfortunately, this book was not it for me.

My first problem with the book was the switching between different POV's, and it not being clear whose POV it was at times. I found myself going back pages, just to figure out who the new character was and what their relevance was to the story. The timeline also shifted randomly, from present day, to 2017, to 2006? to 1984; sometimes without it even making sense why we were shifting. While my understanding was that the story was trying to illustrate a bigger picture of grief, it came off as very inconsistent and left me more confused than aware.

The synopsis made me believe that the "mysterious death" would possibly be figured out in the story, and that Jade would be overcoming her trauma regarding it. I think the story ended up being more about Jade figuring out her sexuality and how to be both with other people and on her own, and the way the story went about this was my second problem. While Jade is 'finding herself', she essentially cheats on the person she is seeing, and only talks about consent for being polygamous after the cheating. Her partner, Tay, asks her if she is trying to have her cake and eat it too. While I don't think this is the case in true polygamy, I agreed with Tay here, as Jade was doing this throughout the novel. Instead of sympathizing with her, I ended up considering the main character to be the villain.

While these points brought my rating for this novel down, there were a couple of aspects I enjoyed. The cultural references and characters speaking patois was one thing that helped me feel more connected to the characters and story. In Toronto, almost everyone is either an immigrant or children of immigrants, and it was fun reading about a culture different from my own but so close to home.

I also enjoyed Jade's final trip on her own. It being dangerous for black women to travel alone is a terrible reality, but I did feel that the trip wrapped up nicely how Jade had grown as a person. While usually dependent on being with someone, I think this shows that she had finally started seeing herself as her own, liberated woman.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for the eARC in exchange for a review!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. I tried to get into it but could not finish. The writing was choppy and the story did not grab me.

A very sad tale of one woman who goes astray and loses herself followng the death of her sister. There are some key moments to understand the grieving process but I found this a bit heavy and when it was good, it was still unclear. I don't think I am the right reader for this book.

★★★ 3.5/5

Jade is a twisted green - Tanya Turton.

*ARC provided by NetGalley*

You guys don’t understand how excited I was when I received this arc. I liked the synopsis —and the cover— a lot. I just couldn't wait to read it.

The characters felt so real and genuine I often found myself relating to them so hard and tearing up a bit from time to time. While I found myself relating to Jade and wanting her to just be happy, there was something about the writing style that made it just so difficult for me to get through the story. I can see the author’s life experiences in the book, what it was meant to be and to represent and I really appreciated that. The book was definitely not for me, since I tend to enjoy a completely different writing style and I don’t read as much YA contemporary stories as much given my current fantasy obsession.

Jade is a Twisted Green is a fiction novel about a young woman coming to age and discovering herself after traumatically loosing her twin sister. This novel explores the necessity of strong friendships and recognizing your sexuality. In the story she experiences an event that acts as a catalyst in her mid 20s which leads to her growth. Jade is an easy character to connect to because feeling “stuck in a moment” is something many people can relate to. Additionally she talks about the experience of being an immigrant and how it can affect your life and culture when you are older. I really enjoyed this novel.

"Jade Is a Twisted Green" was a very anticipated read for me, but it ended up falling a bit flat for numerous reasons. The book follows Jade as she tries to heal and work through the grief caused by her twin sister's death, an experience that is making her question everything in her life. I found this plotline very well executed, and Turton wrote these parts in an eloquent and emotional way, which is a writing style I enjoy.
However, I was ultimately let down by the choice of having different point of views, which take away from Jade's path, and I found that I could not connect with Jade's grief as we were not given much information or shown much about her twin sister.

I found this book to be absolutely amazing. I really related to main character Jade who feels stuck in life following the grief of losing her twin sister. This novel explores the extent of grief in life and the way it changes you forever. The way Jade closed herself off from others, even those she loved also felt deeply relatable. It also explored how grief can cause you to lose yourself and just how difficult it can be to find yourself as an adult.

This novel also had some really breathtaking quotes as well, The question Turton proposes of "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" really resonated with me as I'm on my own journey of being a 20 something growing up and holding myself back because of fear of failure.

I was so excited to read this book and really wanted to love it. After all, it has all the right ingredients for me. But unfortunately it was too all over the place to enjoy. The structure made it a challenge, as did the highlighting of characters povs who didn't end up being significant enough. I wish it stayed with Jade and her journey entirely. That's where all the interested was and I was intrigued by her as a character but it never quite got there.

Reminiscent of Akwaeke Emezi’s “You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty”, JADE IS A TWISTED GREEN ruminates on the similar theme of how to live while grieving someone you love. Jade is an incredible character and I loved to watch her on her journey. Each situation she found herself in was formative to her growth and as a woman in my mid-twenties myself, her emotions were viscerally relatable. I can’t recommend this gem of a book enough.

I requested this advanced copy because I read the synopsis and thought I would love the story and immerse myself in a different culture than mine. And I got half of what I expected. But I wasn't able to get past 55% of the book. My review should absolutely be taken with a grain of salt. But maybe my opinion can shed some light on why this didn't work for me or others.

I'd like to start with the pros, as they are the reason I give it two stars and not one, despite having DNF it. I really enjoyed the major theme of grief and discovering who we are, especially after a significant loss, whether it's a person or a very important part of ourselves. Besides Jade, almost all the other characters had losses of their own, and I felt the author tried to show us that through the different POVs. While I think the different POVs distort what one would expect of Jade's story, I appreciate the intent behind it. And because of that, fortunately, or unfortunately, I ended up connecting more with Tay. One of the last chapters I read from Tay's perspective led us to see a little more of her past, which broke my heart.

As for the writing style, I didn't particularly like it, but I loved the fact that the author wrote a significant part of the story in Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole language with West African influences, spoken primarily in Jamaica and among the Jamaican diaspora. I wasn't able to understand everything, especially since English isn't even my native language and so I was doubly at a disadvantage, but I made the effort and found it easier to figure out than I expected. I enjoyed trying to understand the language, and I felt much closer to the characters because of it.

As I think I didn't get to the part that focuses more on the alleged polyamorous relationship, I won't elaborate on that; also because I am not poly, I am not in a position to talk about the representation of it. But from what I read, none of Jade's relationships sounded real. I couldn't believe she was in love because it always seemed like a way to deal with pain. The way Tay came back into Jade's life after being apart for so long felt forced. And I didn't have time to see enough of the relationship with Morgan.

Ultimately, I felt absolutely disconnected from the narrative because it felt like it was missing a backbone. I dragged out the reading and forced myself to move forward with no will, so I ended up accepting that this one was not for me. Reading should bring us at least a sense of excitement for what comes next, and that didn't happen for me. I also want to clarify that, although it wasn't for me, I'm pretty sure it will be for someone else. It's a spiritual and thought-provoking read in many ways.

I DNF'd this book after only 17%. The timeline was really jumpy and the writing style wasnt engaging me. The comparison to Honey Girl really reeled me in as that is one of my favorite books, but this just didn't do it for me right off the bat 🤷‍♀️