Book Talk Review; Liberty

This is not a book. It's a masterpiece. 

At 2:01 AM on Labor Day Monday, the first gunshots ring out inside Liberty gay dance club in Jacksonville, Florida. The next few hours find August Brees and Corey Ross, both eighteen and coming off the most transformative and romantic summer of their lives, fighting against all odds to forge something everlasting out of two ephemeral lives. 

During a time when the crime of living your truest life can get you shamed, condemned, or banished from public life altogether, Liberty is about the battle to love and survive in a world that may not always love you back. 

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Here's the deal Book Talkers, what I'm about to say about Liberty by Seth King is going to stray so far away from my norm that it's going to shock you all. There will be my raw, honest, unfiltered views one-hundred percent through. I'm just warning you now-I won't hold back. If that scares you, makes you uncomfortable in any way, please don't continue. We will not tolerate anything that tries to put a negative hateful light on this reality. 

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When I was asked to read this book my immediate answer was yes. I will never say no to a Seth King book. But I wasn't aware of what I was signing up for. 

Now I read the blurb, I thought I was prepared. But nothing can truly prepare you for a read like this. This is the heaviest thing I have ever read. And it rocked me to my core. 

Liberty is about a boy named August. A boy named August who fell in love with a boy named Corey. And together they faced the reality of what our country is. 

Liberty is fiction wrapped in reality. Because while this particular event did not actually happen one exactly like it, barely a year ago. A fucking year ago did. And it's the sad sick truth of what we live in today. 

I'll admit y'all early on the tears came. Why? Because I knew whatever the end result was going to be it was going to hurt. 

You see the love between August and Corey develops in a shy organic way. After all, they live in the South where a love like theirs is so out of reach it's insanity. But they make it work. Oh do they make it work their way and I love the way Seth describes love. He hits on all the points. All of them. 

I was a smiling fool as these characters were discovering each other. 

August was the shy bookworm that made my heart ache and I just wanted to hug him. 

Corey was strong but he was also vulnerable. He was passion and love. He was also the sad reality of different-ness. 

And then came the other part of Liberty. The part that is so close to reality it made me shake. It made me sick. Not because I couldn't handle reading it, but because it reality masked as fiction. 

The thing is, this happened. This particular event might be fiction, but it is based on a very real and very heartbreaking event. And despite how many tears I shed. Despite how many times I had to stop and take a deep breath I kept going. I knew I had to keep going because the lives being taken in the text I was reading were fake-yet they represented lives that were actually snatched away-and I owed it to them and to myself to read it. 

Last year 49 people died in a night club at the hands of a gunman. While this book is NOT a Pulse book. It's inspired by it. 

It's a story of two boys who just wanted to love each other. Two boys who fell in love in the wrong place and ended up visiting the wrong club on the wrong night.

 And I have never felt more honored to have a platform to help share this.

Because let's face the facts things like the shooting described in Liberty happened. And Pulse really did happen last year. And those are truths we have to live with.  

Liberty is the best book I've ever read. And I don't say that lightly. It's the most meaningful. The most real. 

Seth King is using his platform to tell a reality that most are too afraid to. And I'll be damn sure to support him and whatever he does. I have so much admiration for it. 

I hated Seth for a few pages. I changed my mind about where the story was going about three times over the nine and a half hours I spent reading. In the end I understood why the events played out the way they did. That doesn't mean I have to like him for it. 

I hated the truth even if it was supposed to be disguised as fiction. And it touched me and made me cry. I fell in love with a love story and got sick over the reality. And this is a book that is going to turn people's minds and I am so so lucky to have been able to read it.

This review, if you want even call it a review is so much more. Because this book is so much more. It's a masterpiece. A piece of history that I will hold onto for the rest of my life. That America will hold onto forever.  

I'm not scared for this to go public. I'm not scared that this is no longer a review of a piece of fiction, but of reality. Because at the end of the day the issues will never go away. 

Liberty was a joy to read. Sounds weird to say that given the content, but it really was. Because it's not a tragedy. But real life that just happens to host a tragic event. 

With the way Seth King writes I have no doubt every single person who picks up this book is going to be exactly like me. Will there be haters? Probably, because many don't like being confronted with the truth. But that's okay. Because it's out there and those who read and understand and take in the beauty along with the tragedy are the only ones that matter. 

Seth King pushes boundaries and I respect him so much for that. With his poetic writing style and his determination to write what is real-this book is going to make beautiful waves. They might be choppy, but they'll still be beautiful. 

I thank Seth a lot in my reviews. This time is no different. I thank him for being brave enough to speak up. For using the voice he has. As every time he uses his voice I get to read it, I get to share it, and I get to show and share my voice as well. 

Book Talkers, do not take this lightly. Do not read this and cast it off as fiction. 

Embrace it. 

Embrace our history that isn't even history yet. 

Embrace the beautiful, flawed, messy life we all could have if more saw past the bullshit and faced the truth. 

That is what Liberty is for me. 

What is it for you? 

*Quote-

"You cannot change someone's nature just because you want to."

"Humans are what they are"

"The only thing worse than ignorance is actually having to acknowledge how fucked we all are." 

-Abri