Candice Montgomery

***ARC provided by the publisher for review
I was super stoked for this collection of short stories (yay astrology love stories!), but the result did not match my expectations at all! Each story begins with an introduction to the signs in Venus, where each explores relationships and interpersonal relations – in theory the perfect way to set the tone for each story, while also providing a short but in-depth explanation of astrology tropes for those less familiar. But then each story proceeds to have their protagonist act out their story as the Sun sign rather than Venus. Yes, a person can have their Sun and Venus in the same sign, but with the exception of one story this is at no point made clear, and it would have been far simpler to just introduce the stories with a brief explanation of the Sun signs rather than Venus. Astrological pet peeves aside (though they remained a niggling annoyance throughout), the stories themselves often weren’t of the best quality either. Most of the authors chose to trade on played out tropes, most of the characters lacked anything but superficial depth, and some of the plots were severely lacking in development full out. Yes, we’re here for trope-y love stories, but at least make the characters interesting or their stories eye-catching! The only story that had decent world building that I wanted to explore more was Cam Montgomery’s story “Formation,” which is ironic because Ophiuchus is not even an astrological sign, it’s a constellation. UGH. And, they barely got into the story before it ended, because it was too damned short! Double UGH! Oh well, some story collections can’t have everything, and my expectations were clearly far too high.… (mais)

*I WAS PROVIDED A PHYSICAL ARC FOR THE PURPOSES OF A BLOG TOUR. THIS HASN’T AFFECTED MY OPINION*

This book really stunned me.

When I opened this book and started reading the first page, I knew I was going to be obsessed with it.

Candice Montgomery has a way of writing to entrance their readers, and it stayed that way throughout the majority of the book.

Torrey really opened our eyes to issues we aren’t always exposed to but can still see a lot of; those being harassment, racism, low incomes, homophobia within the home and outside it, familial problems, and so many more.

"There are a lot of things I need to worry about in life, like, as a Black male teen. A lot of things I have to worry about seperately—as a teen and again as a male and then, further still, as a Black person. Confusing, right? Well, try being me. When you combine those seperate parts, apparently, I’m lethal. I am a problem."
(This is quoted from the unedited text.)

Montgomery made sure to address every single issue without a stumble, and they projected them well throughout the characters.

Though, I did have just a few problems that I picked up during reading.

For one, I feel like Torrey’s relationship with Gabe happened way too quickly. Sure, I know that can happen sometimes in real life, but it felt almost unrealistic in this book. I feel like they spent a few outings together before deciding to get together, and it really kind of threw me off with that sudden pacing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that they were together and happy with each other, but it just felt like them “dating” happened way faster than we could’ve processed and that there was little to no building to it.

Another Torrey’s vandalism decision toward the end of the book. I completely get where Mongomery was trying to go with this, but again, I felt like there was barely any building up to that point. I feel like Torrey almost made a “why not?” decision about it, and I didn’t really understand why it happened all of a sudden.

Other than those few things, I loved this book.

I feel like this book, if taught in school, would change a lot of people’s perspectives, views, and feelings. I feel this book would be a great addition to schools’ curriculums and could ultimately shape our future generations.

For that, I rate By Any Means Necessary 3.5 stars. I definitely suggest y’all to read it, and I hope you enjoy it and learn from it like I did.… (mais)