Riley Weaver Needs a Date to the Gaybutante Ball was a fun young adult romp through small town gay life for a junior in high school. I initially picked up this book because I thought it would be a fun, light read during #PrideMonth 2023. While I had a hard copy, I ended up listening to it via an ALC provided by @librofm .  

 

Riley, a junior in high school has dreams of getting out of his small, rural hometown as a femme gay guy. The best way out of his small hometown is by gaining membership to the Gaybutante Society which has launched several queer kids into the arts, activism, and pop culture. Riley feels that it is a perfect match for him. However, Skylar - a gay athlete and Riley’s contemporary has other thoughts. Skylar doesn’t believe that gay guys want to date femmes and makes a wager with Riley, that he won’t be able to find a masc gay guy to ask him to the gaybutante ball at the end of the new member season. Is Riley able to find such a date? Is Skylar who he says he is? What does it mean to be labeled femme and gay? 

 

Overall, I thought this was a funny romp of a book. One thing that I kept having to remind myself based on the plot and characters was that this was marketed as young adult. In some ways it felt more middle-grade to me and felt like it might find a larger audience there. However, I thought this was a fun, easy-to-read departure from my normally more serious reads. 

 

3 Stars! 

“𝙸’𝚖 𝚒𝚗 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚊𝚢𝚋𝚞𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝚊𝚕𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚢 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚙𝚊𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚘 𝚞𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐𝚜 𝚠𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚙𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚞𝚙. 𝚂𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚖𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚎𝚛-𝚢, 𝚋𝚞𝚝𝙸 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚒𝚝’𝚜 𝚌𝚞𝚝𝚎.”

🌈🌈🌈🌈 / 5

»»————-✼————-««

Review:

A huge thank you to Harper Collins 360 and the author for the gifted copy of this fabulous book!

This was my first Jason June read and let me tell you, I’m running to Waterstones before work so I can pick up another if his works! I loved his fast paced, chatty writing style and I absolutely ate this book up! Did I stay up until 1am reading this last night? Yes! Do I regret it? Absolutely not! I was happy, silent (it was 1am I had to be respectful of my family) screaming at the ending!! I loved the addition of the podcast episodes in the chapters it helped add a flare of Riley’s personality!✨

RWNADTTGB was a fabulous queer-tastic coming of age story which explored the difficulties of friendships, life and finding love while being a queer teen. I went through a rollercoaster of emotions reading this, but a warm fuzzy happiness filled me throughout reading and I was unable to put this book down!

I love Riley! He’s funny, challenges gender ‘norms’, has a big heart and is as confident as a teen can be! I really enjoyed the chatty style we got as it gave a huge insight into him as a person, I felt like I knew him from page one. 

I liked that we got to see a different way of ‘dating’ most people would have jumped onto a dating app and found people that way, but Riley wanted to find that spark and connection tbrough meeting people and it was so refreshing! I Will however point out, Riley became a wee obsessed and started seeing everyone as a potential date rather than taking the time to get to know them. But he does reflect on that and starts dating’ for a boyfriend rather than ‘dating’ for a date.

We see a huge range of rep in RWNADTTGB including Riley who’s gay and femme, we also meet pansexual, bisexual, lesbian, gender fluid and many other queer characters along the way! At times it was hard to keep track of all the side changes, but the little descriptions Riley gives us of each character definitely made it easier! Also where can I find a place like Mountain Pass? All that queer support and happiness in one place? Sign me up😂

TW: Femmephobic comments are made towards the main character which may be triggering to some readers, there is an authors note at the begging which explains why they have been inputted, put yourself and your mental health first gorgeous✨

For lovers of:

Sometimes the queer community gets far too wrapped up in its own discourse and drama, fixating on respectability and optics over the fundamental meaning of queerness or, you know, being a kind person – and that’s what this book is all about. The titular Riley Weaver decides to start a podcast chronicling his dating adventures after being told by a classmate that gay guys aren’t interested in dating someone as femme as Riley. The catch: Riley has to find a masc date in time for the Gaybutante Ball, or he’ll lose his bet and be forced to drop out of his effort to join the Gaybutante Society, his yearslong dream. Throughout the book we see Riley’s experience trying to find someone to date, but also navigating his relationships with his queer friends and what it means to be a little bit famous. Now, there’s a pretty clear flaw in Riley’s logic here: what does it actually mean for a guy to be masc? When gender roles are so fluid and arbitrarily assigned, how can there ever be an objective designation of masc or femme, beyond what a person identifies as? I was worried about this throughout the book, but without spoiling anything, let me alleviate that concern for any potential readers: it takes a while for that issue to get addressed, but I promise it does happen in a meaningful way. A couple of other elements in the book, on the other hand, didn’t get quite fleshed out in the way one might hope. First: as someone who actually is a podcaster, from my perspective it didn’t necessarily seem like the author really understood what making a podcast entails. It was there in the background of the book but was never really brought up – the technology struggles, the hours spent editing, and the planning that goes into each episode. Is this a huge problem? No. Let’s be real – the podcast element is really just set dressing for the story the author really wants to tell. But given that Riley’s whole dream is to become a podcaster, it seems like these elements should have been taking up more space in his mind. Second, the Gaybutante Society really confused me. It’s supposed to be this huge national organization that has so much influence that it can basically make someone internet famous with a single share, and its members go on to become famous artists, politicians, and actors. But it draws its membership from the high schoolers of only four cities, one of which is the tiny town Riley lives in? And somehow there are enough queer people who a) are interested in joining this organization and b) have some kind of phenomenal talent to fill up the organization? I swear there were more queer people in this tiny town’s high school who wanted to join and had an incredible talent than my decent-sized high school had total. It just didn’t totally track. Also the organization seemed very concerned with keeping a respectable image towards the public – and yet all the parties were filled with underage drinking? That bit made absolutely no sense to me. There’s no way you keep that many giant, over-the-top parties that are getting posted to everyone’s social media quiet, especially when everyone’s getting drunk. So, whatever. Again, not something that ruins the book; it just means it sort of falls apart if you think about it too hard. But it was a genuinely entertaining read, and it takes on a lot of the politicking in the queer community in a really meaningful, important way.

Listen on audiobook. The pace in the book is fast, like unbearable fast and nothing really gets the chance to develop and deepen. The main character is obnoxious, loud, hysterical and self centred to the point that I don’t root for him to get a happy ending.