This book is definitely conflicting. Having read others' reviews for it, there are many opinions in the one-star ones as well as five-star ones that I agree with.
Did it make me think about feminist issues, did it make me want to be more creative and take more action for the things I care about? - Absolutely.
Was it thought-provoking and caused me to have opinions about it? - Yes, that's why I'm writing this review.
Was Chelsea the most shallow kind of feminist I've known (the Kwanzaa and Hannukah part made me cringe so much + refusing to call Isaac a feminist because he's male? seriously?), focusing only on her problems (not working more to get her schoolmates to join her club etc), judging other women for their own choices, and do I think I would've liked the book more with a different kind of protagonist? - HELL YES.
In my opinion the story would have benefitted if it were to be seen from a perspective of a girl who is into something that is not "traditional for girls to do" - for example STEM. Chelsea herself saying "well yeah girls should be allowed to do whatever they want BUT I REALLY HATE SCIENCE SO I DON'T WANT TO BE MADE TO STUDY IT" was a bit tiring for me and just showed how one-dimensional she is.
Also about the incident with the cells from Henrietta Lacks - I myself study chemistry and during my brief time in my university's biochemistry lab I once could actually work with these cells myself. I absolutely agree that it wasn't ethical to take her cells without her consent. Then again, during the part where they talk about the woman's quote who assisted with her autopsy, I didn't agree with the conclusion they got from that. When I worked with those cells, I at first hadn't heard of the story behind them either. Without that, it was just another see-through liquid in a vial. It wasn't a question of race or gender, it was just difficult to associate something like that with a real life person, whoever they came from. But the poem Jasmine wrote after the incident was beautiful and really could be applied to any hate crime or non-consensual experiment against women of colour as well.

I was so keen on this book, the blurb sounded excellent. But I just didn't really get it? They go to a school focused on social justice, where even the science class doesn't actually teach science but discusses social justice aspects of science (which would be a mad interesting class, but also like...not sufficient science education). Do these schools exist? And for a school that focusses on social justice, they seemed really prejudiced. Like moreso than average. I get that was the point the book tried to make but...wouldn't a school focused on social justice actually be keen on activism?

I just felt like I was bashed over the head with raging against the patriarchy and really explicit explanations of why it is bad. Do these characters have other interests? I feel like no. I don't see any. I rarely back down from a fight when a fight is necessary but this book exhausted me with the constant rage.

I enjoyed this book due to Jasmine’s POV, and it was an easy/fast read, but that’s about it. Chelsea as one of the protagonists was very annoying and hard to like; she whined about everything and when others pointed out her feminism was not intersectional or that she was selfish/self-centered, instead of reflecting and growing, she became angry and brushed it off. She did not grow as a character what-so-ever.

This book had the potential to be great. Everyone starts somewhere, so the focus of the book could have been Jasmine and Chelsea’s journey as they learned and grew as feminist throughout the book, but unfortunately the focus of the novel was not that.

Jasmine's Dad only has four months to live due to his cancer diagnosis and he makes Jasmine and her artistic friends promise they will live life to the fullest.

Jasmine and Chelsea, linked by the interest in women's rights and race along with their backgrounds, decide to start a women's rights club in their high school.
Despite some thoughts from teachers about the fact it won't work, it turns out to be a popular club anyway as the girls use their passions and interests to draw people's attentions.
As the blog causes a spark of interest of different types from the students, events and anger also ramps up and the principal nearly shuts their blog down.
The principal shuts their blog down eventually after the girls get their own back on a student that sexually assualted one of the girls - The principal disturbingly brushes over the assault and doesn't investigate.

I definitely preferred Jasmine's character a lot more than Chelsea. Her articles and poetry especially made me say "wow" everytime that I read the work featured on the blog that she creates.

Chelsea instantly irks me as a character from the way she begins talking about the patriarchy creeping into the names of the lipglosses that her Mum picked out for her in the first time that we meet her - although she touches on important feminist topics and makes decent points, it sometimes feels too forced and like her whole personality is just consumed by feminist views and not many of her personality traits come to light, her character reminds me a lot of what modern day feminism currently is.
Although, the poetry that she writes in the novel is actually quite empowering, I also love the way she deals her situation with James!

This book touches a lot on race and gender, which are quite important themes to write about and the opinons of the characters along with the different aspects that are discussed provide a lot of insight and exploration into those topics, a lot of the things that were discussed had me nodding in agreement at various points.

I love the poetry and art the characters come up with in this novel and found it was a great addition to the story.

However, I did notice that there was a scene of sexual assualt and harrasment that was brushed over and not dealt with properly by the school, although the woman's rights club do get their own back on the guy who did it and it strengthens their club as a whole!!

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel and will definitely be re-reading it in the near future!
4.5 stars!

This is a great book for young folks who want to know more about feminism. Although the lack of LGBTQI+ and disability rep has to be acknowledged. Also Chelsea was kind of an irritating character, I chalked that up to her being a young white girl who is a work in progress and has to check her privilege. Overall a good feminism/ activism introduction for young readers.

maybe a 4.5 because it's not quite as good as piecing me together.

people who will like this book:
1. people who love female friendship and feminism
2. people who occasionally fall in love with nerdy book characters
3. people who loved piecing me together by Renee Watson
4. people who get emotional during the song once and for all in newsies
5. people who regularly quote the line, "we just spoke our minds and principal Brenigan you shut us down!" from lemonade mouth
6. people who love influential poetry
7. people who love diversity and representation in books
8. people looking for ways to make positive changes and have their voices heard in school and the workplace
9. anyone patiently waiting for minions rise of gru

*4.5