King and the Dragonflies - Kacen Callender

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Received an arc from Edelweiss+ for an honest review

The concept for this book was really interesting to me; a young boy's brother passes away and he believes his brother has come back as a dragonfly. I love that.

Once I delved into reading this book, I came to really enjoy the dynamic of King and going through his daily life while also remembering his brother, Khalid.

Khalid had a huge impact on King and his perspective on certain concepts and situations. One of which was being gay. One of the long lasting conversations between the two brothers was Khalid telling King, "You don't want them to think you're gay too do you?" and King remembers this even after Khalid has passed. That is why King broke off his friendship with Sandy, a gay boy.

There is a lot of internal conflict in this book, which is something I haven't encountered in a book (especially a middle grade) in a while. King was battling with the memory of his brother and with discovering who he really was.

Something I really respect is that this author wrote this book with a character discovering he is gay in the children/middle grade category. This is something we see more of in young adult books, but not a lot for that specific age group. I think this is something important that children read about, because they can possibly relate with King and what he is going through. And even if they don't personally, they might know someone who does or they can understand what that journey is like.

I also respect the view of death in this book. I didn't personally experience death until I was 15 years old, and it was a shock. It's not that I like that this book can prepare children for death, but it just explains what it is like to go through something so traumatic (especially at an age like Kings).

Overall this book was really good for what it was. I am glad that I read it but I feel like since I am not the target audience that hindered my enjoyment. So my rating is more representative of my overall enjoyment of the book and not the general quality of the book.