When Julia finds a slur about her best friend scrawled across the back of the Kingston School for the Deaf, she covers it up with a beautiful (albeit illegal) graffiti mural.
Her supposed best friend snitches, the principal expels her, and her two mothers set Julia up with a one-way ticket to a “mainstream” school in the suburbs, where she’s treated like an outcast as the only deaf student. The last thing she has left is her art, and not even Banksy himself could convince her to give that up.
Out in the ’burbs, Julia paints anywhere she can, eager to claim some turf of her own. But Julia soon learns that she might not be the only vandal in town. Someone is adding to her tags, making them better, showing off—and showing Julia up in the process. She expected her art might get painted over by cops. But she never imagined getting dragged into a full-blown graffiti war.
Julia’s story is an interesting one. This is the first book I’ve read that had a main character who was deaf; and I won’t forget about You’re Welcome Universe. Julia is also a POC, being that she is Indian. I’m glad that this was briefly talked about in the book as well. I’m also glad that her moms were a subject as well.
Before reading You’re Welcome, Universe, I was interested in reading Julia’s story for a long time. However, it was hearing from another source that You’re Welcome, Universe had an accurate portrayal of a deaf person, that bumped this book up on my TBR. I’m glad to have read the book.
I really liked Julia as a character. She’s definitely strong willed, and has quite a bit of character to her. What I like about Julia most though is that Julia isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Even if she might be wrong; or doesn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle yet. With that said, I didn’t like how pushy she was. Yes, Julia is confrontational at times, other than that though, I found Julia to be overly pushy and very judgemental.
I’ve talked about You’re Welcome, Universe, briefly before on this blog on a different post. I said that I was really looking forward to reading this book, and that I was mostly interested in finding out if Julia stayed best-friends with her friend, which is talked about in the synopsis. I won’t spoil anything, but I’m just immensely glad that things turned out the way they did.
I’m glad that by the end of the book, Julia has grown so much as a person in her own right. You’re Welcome, Universe was interesting right from the beginning, which is a good thing, since I almost didn’t finish reading the book. However, the storyline managed to hold my attention throughout the novel.
I gave You’re Welcome, Universe, 3 of 5 stars on Goodreads.
Happy Reading!
Adele
Adele Is Reading 
One thought on “You’re Welcome, Universe, by Whitney Gardner | Book Review #266”