Book Reviews: The Flowers and Keyboards series by Emmy Engberts

I read the first and third books in the Flowers and Keyboards series by Emmy Engberts as my first two reads of June. I think I saw the free ebook (for Pride month) being advertised on bookstagram. Colour Her is the first one I read, and it turned out to be the third in the series, which is slightly annoying to me since I prefer to read series books in series order. The Flowers and Keyboards series is a trio of books about a neurodiverse and queer group of teen friends in the Netherlands who like makeup and/or gaming and/or cosplay. Each book in the series focuses on each couple in the friend group.

Colour Her is about two girls who meet in a makeup store and bond over a pride month collection from their favorite brand. Amber is a semi-famous makeup influencer YouTuber and Mya is a fan of hers, but she doesn't know how to tell Amber (who she has a crush on) that she watches her YouTube channel and sent her a gift of a big box of makeup because she doesn't want to come across as stalkerish. Amber agrees to tutor Mya (or maybe it's the other way around?) and they become close. The slight deception around the YouTube/fan thing is built up in the book summary as being a big thing that could keep them apart, but it's resolved pretty quickly. Amber is autistic and feels shame about this, not wanting anyone to know; Mya has ADHD, if I remember correctly, and her other friends are neurodiverse. Their main issues in the book is them struggling to let the other in while dealing with their neurodiversity; it's pretty internal. They don't deal with any homophobia, not even internal despite I think Amber not having dated a girl before. The author herself is Dutch, and while her English writing is very good, there's still some jerkiness/weirdness to the language/word usage that took me out of it throughout the book (probably due to mental translation of Dutch terms to English). For instance, a teen girl would never refer to a girl she liked as her lover (they had perhaps barely held hands at that point). In terms of pacing, there was almost no transition from both girls liking the other but not sure where she stood to them holding hands and making out. Each girl narrates alternating chapters (Amber/Mya/Amber/Mya etc.) but I found it almost impossible to distinguish which one was which; their voices were basically identical. I did find it interesting that each chapter started with a makeup item and its definition. Overall, however, I enjoyed this book and the neurodiverse rep. I think also one of them may have been on the ace spectrum? 3.5 stars. Trigger warnings for off-page ableism, internalized ableism, anxiety

Her Elysium (the first book in this series) is about two girls who meet and start to fall for one another while playing a MMORPG (online video game where people play together). However, because Alex's name is gender neutral and her avatar is male and has a strong fighting role, Fleur thinks that her online friend is a boy. I found their conversations to be very perfunctory/basic and not at all flirty, so I couldn't really get why they were blushing and giggling about it when it was shit like this: A--thanks for healing us. F--sure, no problem. 🥱 When they meet at a local gamer meetup, Fleur is surprised and disappointed, and Alex is devastated that the girl she likes thought she was a boy. Luckily they get over this pretty quickly. Unlike Colour Her, Her Elysium has much stronger and external issues. Fleur's parents are classist and make her be friends with the daughters of their society friends because they're "the right kind of people", scolding her and giving her a hard time when she doesn't want to hang out with them. They hate that she plays video games and are also controlling because Fleur has ADHD. This made me angry, per usual. Alex (who also has ADHD) had an ex who denied being not-straight and was really homophobic to her, I think outing her to their classmates. Because of this, she has trauma and is terrified to be another straight girl's experiment and get her heart broken because of this again. Fleur hadn't fallen for a girl before, so Alex has to deal with that fear. Spoiler, highlight to read: Fleur tells her 'friends' that her parents make her hang out with about her new girlfriend, and despite being okay with it, one of them immediately blabs this to her parents, who unsurprisingly immediately call Fleur's and the other friend's parents about it. Fleur's parents are homophobic and freak out. Alex's mom is a child therapist and she reads them the riot act, thankfully. Alex breaks up with Fleur because she doesn't want to experience the heartbreak (obviously, heartbreak happens anyway for both of them because of this). Luckily all is resolved. This book had the same issues re: writing and word usage, but because of the more external and pressing issues, I was more invested. The girls also alternate chapter POVs, and each chapter starts with a video game concept definition which was interesting. 3.5 stars. Trigger warnings: homophobia, ableism, controlling parents, characters are outed, classism

The second book in the series is about the other couple in the group, a genderqueer boy and queer and/or neurodiverse girl who both do cosplay and also play the MMORPG, but since their ebook wasn't free, I didn't download it.

On another note, Blogger stopped letting me add photos via url for some stupid reason. Ugh. If you think I'm going to download online photos just to upload them for my blog posts, think again. Fix this, Google.