Only Mostly Devastated

TITLE: Only Mostly Devastated

AUTHOR: Sophie Gonzales

RELEASE DATE: March 3rd 2020

RATING: ★★★★

-----------------------------------------------

Rep: gay MC, bi LI, latinx li, black side characters, side character with PCOS, fat side character

TWs: homophobia, death, illness

Genre: YA LGBT romance
-----------------------------------------------


E-ARC kindly provided by the publisher.

----------------------------------------------

"We sat in silence for a few seconds, then Lara kicked at a few loose pebbles. ‘Be careful, though. Sure, you can forgive someone for hurting you by accident, right? But if they keep accidentally ripping your heart out over and over again, doesn’t mean they’re terrible people, but it probably means you’re better off going to a distance where they can’t keep doing that. Accidentally or not.’”

At the start of his senior year, Ollie is uprooted from his life is southern Cali and is promptly moved to North Carolina together with his parents to care for his dying aunt, Linda. In North Carolina is a bunch of new, epic friends but also; his summer fling, Will, who he’d gotten involved with the summer just gone while visiting aunt Linda with his family. And lo and behold, guess who Ollie locks eyes with on his first day at his new school?

This book was being marketed as “Grease inspired” and people on Goodreads seem to have loved that/seen the parallels. I’ve seen Grease exactly once when I was in 5th grade and I remember literally nothing about that movie so I can’t really comment on the accuracy of that, but I can say that I enjoyed myself a good deal! I’m giving this book four stars. This book hit all the right spots for me at the moment, it is objectively not the best book I’ve ever read but man, wasn’t this a fun read?!

This book made me laugh and it made me cry, it made me angry and it made me flaily. Ollie was a dang good main character, I took to liking him a lot. For the most part, I could feel his struggles and I liked his character growth during the book, especially ~the biggest change and realization at the end (which I’m not going to spoil here.). Ollie’s reactions were to me a bit over blown at times while I could see his side at the same time…I think this book really nailed the emotional reactions in him, they felt very teenage-like and appropriately explosive/dramatic.

I am a sucker for slow-burn romances and I think the romance in this was just *chefs kiss*. Slow without being too slow. I love the pining and the (very slight) angst that came with it. For the most part, this romance didn’t turn too cheesy for my liking (which quite often is the case in fluffy books like this). This book also contained a secret favorite ‘trope’ of mine: when the popular jock and a nerdy music guy get together. I love opposite attract! Also, big up for not making the sports guys that one-dimensional!

Furthermore I loved the mlm-wlw mutual respect and support in this, and the diversity of this book’s characters too. As a fellow person with PCOS, I loved seeing a character explicitly being given this syndrome!

As is the case with any book, there are a couple of things I can think of on top of my head that were kind of meh/bothered me a little bit. I’m going to list them here.

- Why did Lara have to be that mean, for absolutely no reason? Her behavior for the first half of the book just seemed overblown for no reason and literally made very little sense. It also made her character pretty one-dimensional but then she had an awesome character arc which redeemed her so we’re all good.

- Niamh is a fat character, which yay! She even describes herself as such. However, she also spends a large portion of this book talking about diets and working out, and honestly as a fat person it made me a little bit annoyed to have a fat person be like that. Like can we just not?!

- I know that Will and Ollie are supposed to be teens and their reactions totally reflect that and while I understand Ollie’s reactions on an intellectual level, I also feel like he was being pretty selfish at times and really couldn’t/didn’t even try to see things from Will’s perspective. Which again, he’s a teenager so it’s to be expected but really, it annoyed me how dense and self-centered he was at times.

- I didn’t love the ending because it felt sort of rushed, like the author tried to cram as many happy things in this book in as few pages as possible to make up for the heavy parts of this book. It honestly in my opinion made the book seem like it came together too quickly and too easily and everything just sort of resolved too perfectly.

So, in conclusion: read this if you want a cute slow-burn romance that maybe doesn’t ~say that much, like read this if you’re into something cute and fluffy that also contains some slight angst! I really did enjoy myself and I hope to check more books by this author out in the future.

---------------------------------

Rep: gay MC, bi LI, Latinx li, black side characters, wlw side character, character with PCOS, fat rep