Hilarity ensues when a slacker teen boy discovers he's gay, in this unforgettably funny YA debut.
Mike Tate is a normal dude. He and his friends have a crappy band (an excuse to drink cheap beer and rock out to the Lemonheads) and hang out in parking lots doing stupid board tricks. But when Mike's girlfriend Lisa, who knows him better than he does, breaks up with him, he realizes he's about to have a major epiphany that will blow his mind. And worse--he gets elected to homecoming court.
It's like the apocalypse came, only instead of nuclear bombs and zombies, Mike gets school participation, gay thoughts, and mother-effin' cheerleaders.
With the free spirit of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the raw voice of Winger, and characters reminiscent of Freaks & Geeks, this debut YA offers a standout voice and a fresh, modern take on the coming-out story.
I hate the writing of Whatever. The third-person present is distracting and confusing to read. It makes no sense why it's not written in first-person, especially since the writing is so "voice-y" you might as well be in Mike's head anyway. I found the character and writing to be kind of alienating, the use of only last names, even for siblings, the sports, the constant thoughts of attractive men and women lent themselves to a very stereotypically masculine book that I couldn't relate to, even while dealing with LGBT subject matter. I actually think the juxtaposition could work for teen boys, but coming at it as an adult woman, it wasn't for me.
I have no real issues with the plot, though it takes far too long to get moving. I do have issues with the Thanksgiving scene. Mike, struggling with being bi or maybe just gay, is confronted by his grandmother, whom Mike's mom has outed him to. She proceeds to uncomfortably grill him about his relationship options and insinuate that being gay is a choice before outing him to the entire family. Mike's upset for a hot second. His mother's overstepping is never mentioned, despite being just as inappropriate. The scene's not really played for laughs, but it definitely has a light tone meant to evoke that Grandma means well and really it could have been worse! No. Bad book. No cookie.
Title: Been Here All Along
Author: Sandy Hall
Genre: Contemporary
Series: n/a
Pages: 224
Published: Expected
Source: ARC via NetGalley
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Gideon always has a plan. His plans include running for class president, becoming head of the yearbook committee, and having his choice of colleges. They do NOT include falling head over heels for his best friend and next door neighbor, Kyle. It’s a distraction. It’s pointless, as Kyle is already dating the gorgeous and popular head cheerleader, Ruby. And Gideon doesn’t know what to do.
Kyle finally feels like he has a handle on life. He has a wonderful girlfriend, a best friend willing to debate the finer points of Lord of the Rings, and social acceptance as captain of the basketball team. Then, both Ruby and Gideon start acting really weird, just as his spot on the team is threatened, and Kyle can’t quite figure out what he did wrong…
Been Here All Along is a cute book. It's syrupy and sweet and ends exactly how you expect. Which, for me, also made it pretty boring.
Kyle and Gideon are next door neighbors and best friends since infancy. The dual POVs as Kyle comes to terms with his sexuality and they fall for each other are perfectly lovely. There's a subplot regarding Gideon's undiagnosed learning disability that's handled very tactfully. Their families are ultra supportive and neither faces ostracization at school for liking boys. The big misunderstanding comes relatively late in the story and it's resolved fairly quickly, if a little pat. It's a nice enough bit of fluff, but I have issues with the writing.
First, the four POVs are unnecessary. In addition to Kyle and Gideon, Gideon's brother Ezra and Kyle's girlfriend Ruby are also POV characters. Ezra is especially underdeveloped and seems to only exist in a deus ex machina sort of way, driving a frequently stalled plot forward. He's also Ruby's last minute reward for not being the worst person in history. Ruby's a cheerleader who focuses a lot on how people perceive her. She puts up a facade to hide the fact that her family is going though some serious financial shit and she's probably not going to college after all. She's shown to have a lot of remorse afterwards, but continually does mean girl things to drive Kyle and Gideon apart. So when it comes time for her to usher in the conflict, Hall can't pull the trigger. Wanting to protect Ruby's redemption, she has her faceless mean girl friends do it instead, setting Ruby up as a victim in a situation of her own making. It feels lazy.
I also found the three male POVs to blend together. The voices aren't distinct at all, which is pretty impressive considering they're a 20something surfer, a type A nerd, and a sensitive basketballer. It's a good thing Gideon and Kyle thing about each other so often, or I'd have had to flip back to the chapter header every time I took my eyes off the page for a single second.
We need LGBT+ books with happy endings. LGBT+ books with positive gay and bi rep. LGBT+ books where no one dies. And Been Here All Along definitely fits that mold and will hopefully mean a lot to someone, but with other authors like Dahlia Adler publishing LGBT+ books that are positive and well written? This one's not for me.
I don't force myself to review my "me" books, but I've been in a bit of a writing slump and this worked out so well last summer when that happened, I decided to bring back....two minute (or less) reviews of the books I read when I wasn't here! Covering February, March, and April reads that left enough of an impact to write about them. (Sorry Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever.)
OK, so when Jess told me I had to read a contemporary, prison/cult retelling of The Girl With the Silver Hands, I looked at her pretty funny. Like, how?
This book is so good. The way the information on The Prophet and the cult is doled out is perfect, tense and intriguing. Minnow's absolutely inspiring, as she adjusts to the outside world at the same time as she adjusts to a world without her hands. The relationship that develops between her and her cell mate, Angel might be my favorite part.
My only teeny, tiny quibble is Jude, Minnow's boyfriend, and his ultimate fate. There were parts of it that were just too convenient and pulled me out of the tense, realistic thriller.
Oh, the Twelve Dancing Princesses reference! Authors, don't bother trying to reinvent that story anymore. Stephanie Oakes has crushed it.
Title: The Rose Society
Author: Marie Lu
Genre: Fantasy
Series: The Young Elites #2
Pages: 418
Published: October 13, 2015
Source: Borrowed - Library
Rating: 4 out of 5
I liked the concept of The Young Elites more than I liked the execution. The series tells the story of the birth of a super villain, from the villain's POV. That is absolutely an amazing idea, but in the first book, all I felt for Adelina was pity.
TRS picks up where TYE left off, with Adelina and Violetta cast out of the Daggers and searching for Elites of their own, to overthrow the throne. Meanwhile, Raffaele is ingratiating himself to Queen Giulietta as part of The Dagger's own plan for the kingdom.
This book is dark. Super dark. But in a way that makes total sense. You're in Adelina's head, rooting for her, right up until the last chapter when she sits down and you finally realize, "oh god, what have we done?" I'm not sure how the trilogy can wrap up, because the final scene is so masterful.
Title: Strong Signal
Author: Megan Erickson , Santino Hassell
Genre: Romance
Series: Cyberlove #1
Pages: 235
Published: February 15, 2016
Source: Purchased
Rating: 5 out of 5
Can I just put the blushing emoji for this review?
I don't read a ton of contemporary romances, but when Dahlia turned me onto this one, I knew I had to have it. This book is so steamy, so unbelievably hot, just the promo pictures had me overset.
Told in dual POVs between Garrett, a tough, closed-off Staff Sergeant stationed in Afghanistan, and Kai, an agoraphobic Twitch streamer, the first half of the novel details a long distance video game rivalry turned love affair. And I LOVED IT. The way the sexual tension builds into the masturbation and videos is extreme and heady.
Once Garrett returns from his deployment, the tone of the book changes into something more tender as both men work on their mental health and explore a LTR neither of them expected. I especially liked how it touched on the difficulties for servicemen returning to the workforce once their terms end and how Kai's agoraphobia couldn't just be cured with a hug and a handhold. It's work and therapy and medication and dedication, just like in real life. But, and I think this is super important, especially in M/M, the book lets both guys show a lot of vulnerability and silliness and Garrett and Kai get their HEA. Totally recommended.
Title: Illuminae
Author: Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: The Illuminae Files #1
Pages: 599
Published:October 20, 2015
Source: Purchased
Rating: 5 out of 5
First and foremost, this is the most beautiful book I've seen since Six of Crows. The plastic cover hiding the redacted reports. The ads, handwritten notes, and personal touches. The collage of faces. And this fucking page:
No wonder I couldn't get into this one when I first read my eARC. It's absolutely imperative you experience it in dead tree format.
The romance plot is a little meh for me, but once Kady starts investigating the plague, holy hell the main plot is bonkers awesome. Without giving anything away, I'm going to burst into tears every time someone says "don't look at me" for the rest of my life. It hasn't even been two months and I'm already rereading. Don't sleep on this.
Gotham Academy reminds me a lot of award winning webcomic, Gunnerkrigg Court. Both stories are about girls who've just lost their mothers going to haunted boarding schools, of course, but I also see stylistic similarities in the blending of gothic mystery with fantasy.
Olivia Silverlock's returned from summer break with selective amnesia, an ex-boyfriend, and a whole new attitude. Obviously the question of what happened last summer hangs over the volume, along with the aforementioned ghost story. It's compelling and spooky and surprisingly fits well with the larger Bat-universe, which prefers sci-fi to explain its characters' powers. Between an interesting mystery, a humanizing of old villains, and jaw dropping art work, this graphic novel series is my new obsession.
Title: The Joker: Death of the Family
Author: Scott Snyder
Genre: Horror
Series: n/a
Pages: 456
Published: October 22, 2013
Source: Purchased
Rating: 4 out of 5
I reviewed a good portion of Death of the Family back in 2014 with Batgirl Vol. 3, but for such a huge storyline spanning so many monthly titles, I was really excited to see a full standalone graphic novel.
Stand alone it does. It's an interesting choice to only include the first and last Batman issues, skipping over four volumes of Bats and Joker recreating famous face-offs through their history. It's a choice I actually support though, as so much of the storyline revolves around removing Batman from the Batfamily. The only thing that could be confusing is since the meeting where the Family learns Batman knew Joker might know their identities is missing, their anger at the end seems disproportional.
The book is divided into chapters for each member of the Family and friends, starting with Catwoman and Joker's return to Gotham, then Harley Quinn, Batgirl, Red Hood and Red Robin combined, Nightwing, and Damien, before ending with Batman's last volume and the Joker's...defeat. The stories maintain a rough chronological order that keeps the through-line moving, though Barbara does show up for the Teen Titans, after she should already be captured. A minor quibble in a series where the Robins' ages make literally no sense.
Death of the Family is probably never going to be as essential as Killing Joke or even Death in the Family, partly because of it's door stopper size, but I'm glad they put the whole thing out.
That does it for this installment, folks. Stay tuned next time for the meanest review I've ever written. It was ten words.
Title: None of the Above
Author: I.W. Gregorio
Genre: contemporary
Series: none
Pages: 352
Published: April 7th, 2015
Source: Publisher via Edelweiss
Rating: 4 out of 5
A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she was born intersex... and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between.
What if everything you knew about yourself changed in an instant?
When Kristin Lattimer is voted homecoming queen, it seems like another piece of her ideal life has fallen into place. She's a champion hurdler with a full scholarship to college and she's madly in love with her boyfriend. In fact, she's decided that she's ready to take things to the next level with him.
But Kristin's first time isn't the perfect moment she's planned—something is very wrong. A visit to the doctor reveals the truth: Kristin is intersex, which means that though she outwardly looks like a girl, she has male chromosomes, not to mention boy "parts."
Dealing with her body is difficult enough, but when her diagnosis is leaked to the whole school, Kristin's entire identity is thrown into question. As her world unravels, can she come to terms with her new self?
There aren’t enough books with LGBT main characters, much less the less well known I for intersex. So when I heard debut author I.W. Gregorio was not only writing one, but writing from their perspective as a Yale school of medicine graduate? I could have done a jig. I feel Gregorio handles a difficult subject with aplomb, though as I’m not intersex it’s not really my opinion that matters.
Gregorio has built a realistic world where people don’t react well to the sudden announcement that their homecoming queen and star runner has testicles. This does include slurs against both trans and intersex people. The language is never condoning and the author’s note at the end gives a very fair explanation as to why the author felt the language was necessary, but I know these words are still deal breakers to some.
And yet, I didn’t feel enough conflict in the story. There are bullies and some misunderstandings between friends, but I didn’t feel any real threat or urgency to explain Kristin’s extended absence. The end does have a violent, sexual assault-y climax, but it’s written in the same laissez-faire style where I couldn’t believe anything bad would actually happen. In the end, the character actually has a great, diverse support system, which is what we want in real life but makes for a less impactful read.
Title: No One Needs to Know
Author: Amanda Grace
Genre: contemporary, lgbt
Series: None
Pages: 240
Published: Expected September 8, 2014
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Sometimes, the cost of love is too steep
Olivia's twin brother, Liam, has been her best friend her whole life. But when he starts dating, Olivia is left feeling alone, so she tries to drive away Liam's girlfriends in an effort to get her best friend back.
But she meets her match in Zoey, Liam's latest fling. A call-it-like-she-sees-it kind of girl, Zoey sees right through Olivia's tricks. What starts as verbal sparring between the two changes into something different, however, as they share their deepest insecurities and learn they have a lot in common. Olivia falls for Zoey, believing her brother could never get serious with her. But when Liam confesses that he's in love with Zoey, Olivia has to decide who deserves happiness more: her brother or herself?
You can pry the ship of Olivia and Zoey out of my cold dead hands. I am so unbelievably in love with them as a couple and I’m desperately invested in their relationship.
And to think I almost missed out on this book entirely because the cover and title imply it’s about cheating.
The blurb does this book a huge disservice, so allow me a minor spoiler. Liam is not in love with Zoey. He never says he’s in love with Zoey. (He says the opposite.) They’re casual. Liam starts liking her more than she likes him, but that is absolutely not the same thing. Around the three quarter mark, the relationships start to feel kind of cheater-y, which is what causes the climax, but I don’t feel like this is a “cheating” book. Your mileage may vary.
Liam is really a non-factor in most of the book, though. Zoey’s POVs almost never features him, thoughts of him, anything. Instead, it’s all about the slow build from hate to friendship to love between Olivia and Zoey. It’s so natural and sweet; it’s probably one of the best examples of a relationship in YA/NA. If I had one quibble, it’s that Zoey never gave gifts or planned the dates. I understand Olivia has more money and time, but I just wish I’d felt a little more give and take. Still, I’m never going to get over the graffiti date. The idea of a love interest taking the time to plan a perfect day for their partner, institute it, and use it to show their affection? Beautiful.
I did find one thing extremely weird. Zoey has a little sister who she’s extremely close to. She comes along on trips out with both Olivia and Liam, but at the climax, she has no idea who Liam is. (She didn’t talk to them on the ferry, but she had her face pressed to the glass and definitely saw them together, but didn’t recognize him at all when he arrived at the house. Huh?) I feel like a scene must have been added and not edited in properly. I hope that’s corrected before release. OH NO, LOOKS LIKE I MUST BUY A COPY TO CHECK. IT IS A TRAGEDY.
Their home lives are a little melodramatic and feature some subplots I could take or leave. The maybe-cheating didn’t make me feel good, though teenagers aren’t known for their complex romantic morals. It doesn’t matter. This is a book that features a f/f relationship with no homophobia or consequences of being gay. Do you understand how rare that is? If I'd been able to see a happy, healthy homo relationship when I was a teen, instead of sad issue books where being gay is the only thing in a person's life, it would have saved me a lot of pain and tears in my own life. So allow me to quote Olivia,
