Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I think this is the longest review I’ve left on a book yet but man this book reached deep down into my soul and touched it. I came into this biography with a passing knowledge about Freddie Mercury, Queen and even the AIDS epidemic. I grew up listening to Queen as my parents were big fans. They had every one of their pre-90s albums on vinyl and I can still remember the very first one I listened to - News of The World, I picked that one because it had the "weird robot" on the front - I was instantly hooked. But growing up listening to their music and knowing their history are two different things. It wasn't until I was in my late teens coming to terms with my own sexuality that I learned who exactly Freddie Mercury was and how he died. I did some research on him, what limited stuff there was on the internet at that time, but it took until I was an adult to really take up an interest in him and his legacy. I watched the recent movie biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and it completely reignited the fire of how much I have always loved Queens music. And instead of trolling through Wiki pages trying to learn all I could about the history of Queen, and more specifically Freddie, that I stumbled onto this book. And out of the seemingly 100s of Freddie biographies I could have chosen to read - I am so glad I picked this one. Not only does this book seem to give a brash look at Freddies life, choices, and consequences but as it goes through his timeline it chronicles HIV/AIDS and its development and spread in history. Having these two story lines going on simultaneously made Freddies life and death all that more poignant. Not to mention, I was born in the late 80s. I was never around to see what our world was like at that time for LGBTQA people and the struggles they had to face with the AIDS epidemic. “We view the past from a different present” page 390. It is not something that is taught in school or anything so my knowledge of it was limited to hearsay, movie plots and what little information I had come across in my lifetime (ie I knew that our US Government at the time hindered a lot but I had no idea how badly they messed up our people until reading this). While reading this book, any of the singles they mentioned, performances, articles, places, events etc I looked up (unless I had them already). So I listened to and watched things while reading this so I could really get in it. That so helped. There were only a couple songs mentioned that I couldn't remember hearing, I looked up people who I didn't know - basically immersed myself in this as much as I could. And by the end of reading this, I had cried several times. This was an intense, incredibly emotional, powerful biography. Freddie may have made some questionable choices in his life but he deserves all the accolades and the legacy that came from his immense talents.