eloise_bradbooks's reviews
769 reviews

 This is such a needed book! And knowing Becky Albertalli's history with queerness and coming to terms with her sexuality as an adult and being forced out, you can tell this book is a personal one for her, but it will be for many people.

What it's about:
Imogen's finally visiting her bestfriend Lili at college. But Lili has told her queer group of friends that she and Imogen used to date. Which is not true. Because Imogen is straight. The biggest ally you'll ever meet. But she's straight. Right?
When she arrives on campus she pretends to be queer to help her friend. But she's also getting really close to Lili's friend Tessa, so close that she starts feeling things she never knew she could. And she starts questioning if she's ever really been straight at all.

My thoughts:
Like I said, this is a much needed story. About taking your time with figuring yourself out, about friendships and not following societal rules and stereotypes, about being OK with taking up the space you need to take up.
I loved the whole coming to terms with being queer, being unsure, being OK with taking things slowly and wanting to just be OK with feeling whatever you feel without having to specifically define it just yet.
Imogen is surrounded by queer people. Lovely queer friends and family as well as biased hurtful queer people. Just diverse queer people being people, being young adults. Sometimes being imperfect but trying to make it right.

This book just felt like a big hug to anyone who isn't sure, who feels like they shouldn't take up space, who doesn't have everything pinpointed yet. It's a book that tells you you're perfect just the way you are and you are so very welcome here.

Can we use the term "coming of queer" instead of talking of "coming of age"? Like age of what? There is no age for learning and growing and coming into yourself. You can do that at all ages. 

 
Small asexual rant / rambling thoughts:
Personally, I would have liked to see asexuality mentioned at least once (we only hear it once when a friend says she's panromantic and ace).
When I was reading Imogen's thoughts, her struggles to understand what "being attracted" meant, her talking about how she was sort of straight by default because she never really thought of girls "that way"... It all made me think "Maybe you're on the ace spectrum, Imogen!!". Because your internal monologues and questioning very much ressembles mine as an ace person...
But that never crosses her mind. Either she's straight or she's bi. She never thinks about how attraction comes in different forms and maybe they're not all sexual. And Imogen thinks about her sexuality A LOT in this book (understandably). So how come that aspect of sexuality didn't come up? Especially for someone who seems to know so much about the queer community.
It particularly hurt when someone talks about attraction to girls like this : "do you want to fuck her? No? then you're straight". Given, that person is far from a good model in this story, people do say she talks shit. But that part of what she says isn't ever challenged or talked about again. That part about being sexually attracted to women will determine of you're sapphic ot not remains a thought that Imogen carries with her for the rest of the book. For many people, that actually works. But it is also aphobic and invalidates all the sapphic aces out there. One phrase challenging that thought could have done a lot of good. 

 A good book but it could have been much better.
The first half of this book is a cute sapphic love story. The second half is about one of them dying, becoming a reaper and wanting to see her girlfriend again.
I was disappointed to see that there was little thought about family, them grieving, or anyone grieving much to be honest. Nothing about the impact of someone dying on their friends and family... We only really see Ash desperately want to see Poppy again.
I'm all for romance, but you've GOT to have more depth to the rest of the character, not only their relationship with one person.
The ending was pretty sweet though. 

I'm not usually a fan of the amnesia 'trope', but in this instance it worked much better than I was expecting. Things don't magically come back to Stevie. She gets to relearn what she forgot, maybe decide to take new directions as she is a new Stevie. She gets to fall back in love with Nora even though she doesn't remember the last two years together. And i really appreciated that.

I was also a little disappointed that Nora's POV was only seen once in a while, through a sort of letter or two she writes to Stevie, telling her how she feels... There is so much that needed to be unpacked in Nora, who only really had Stevie in her life, only for her to forget her... I would have liked her own POV, experiencing her life through her own eyes and not just being told what she feels every few chapters.
Their getting back together again may have been a little more emotional, I think, had we experienced both POVs.

Other than that though, I really enjoyed this book. There's a little bit of sad but a lot of love, of choosing your own way and making decisions that will set you on a brighter path.

Rep: both MCs read as lesbians although term isn't specifically used in the book (Stevie struggles to come to terms with that part of herself, let alone use the word "lesbian"), Stevie is also Korean-American. 

I'll be honest, I don't know if I really cared as much about the bakery, the romance and magic baked goods parts of this story as I wanted to.
What touched me and made this book feel like a warm hug, a comfort book I know I will come back to, was the discussions / internal thoughts around Syd's gender.
There were even recipes for feelings, for gender expressions, so beautifully written I want to tab them all, print them all, go back and read them on a regular basis.
We don't get to read very many stories about questioning gender identites other than some general trans and non binary stories. I desperately need more agender characters, more questioning agender characters.

Assdfgghjkll THIS BOOK IS THE DEFINITION OF A WARM HUG.
This was adorable! The sweetest people falling for each other. 
So domestic. UGH.
The kindness. The consideration. The attention. The LOVE.
I will not get over how everything was perfect. How there was so little angst (only just some scares around some homophobic teammates but even that was brilliantly addressed and turned around).
THESE MEN.
Ugh.

This is the way I review books now. With phrases that make no sense. Because my heart is just overwhelmed.

Just a couple of things I picked up on I need to write down because I don't want to forget them:
- Alex telling Hawk, Eli's service dog, how glad he is that she's there because she takes such good care of Eli.
- Eli asking if they can take it slow and not get into sex right now. Alex being fine with it. Not talking about sex for the test of the book. Them still falling in love and never questioning the fact they haven't had sex.
- Domesticity.
- No jealousy towards friends.
- Not always saying or doing the right thing first, but making it right straight away, learning, and making up for it in the absolute best way.

 I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. Maybe I can say this: objectively I'd say it's very good, and subjectively I never should have read it, it's not for me.

I picked it up because many mutuals seemed to have loved it. And I can see why! It's fast paced, very hot, a page-turner, not many bad things to say about it at all...
Except the fact that I just felt a little weird about the relationship. The quite large age gap, one of them being 21 and the other's daughter's best friend!! That just doesn't quite fit right with me and although everyone was consenting and the daughter/best friend seemed fine with it eventually, I still just couldn't help but feel like this was full of issues that were almost never raised...
Also, this book is like 90% sex or thinking about sex or sexting. I don't mind sex in books at all but it felt like there really was almost only that. They fell in love with their sex. Or maybe more but we almost only really got to experience their very detailed very hot and spicy sex life.
So yay if that's what you like, you'll very much enjoy this book.
It's just not really what I like to read most. 

This was a really well crafted story, eerie and dark, whilst also being soft and romantic.

This was a fun, exciting graphic novel set in a queernormative future where scientific experiments bring kids together... But with a cost.
I loved this story. The art was great. The characters were all nice and developed in their own way (although sometimes history/backstories/family info? could have made them even more fleshed out).
I can only recommend it to everyone!

A solid YA about a girl who tries to craft the perfect wedding for her mother, while dealing with a lot of pressure (from herself), a distant best friend and lots of questions regarding dating while being ace.

Some might put Felicity into the "annoying character" box as she's an over-worker, anxious perfectionist who can get wild and forget about other people's feelings at times. But this is about her learning to let go and enjoy the ride, and create things that her friends and family will love, without it having to be "traditionally perfect", and I really appreciated that.

What I loved most was Felicity's struggles with wanting to date Nancy while being very insecure about the fact she is ace. She worries about what that means when Nancy seems to like physical affection in a way Felicity might never be able to give. The whole "why am I like this?" speech us aces always seem to have to go through.
On one hand, I loved reading so much about it, I saw so much of myself in Felicity as an anxious biromantic asexual girl who hasn't ever really dated before. 
Then again, I would have appreciated it even more if we got to see Felicity and Nancy talk TOGETHER about sexuality, boundries, and how they could make it work as a couple.

Yeah, the main plot points were predictable and might I even say quite simple. 
But it doesn't really matter so much for me as this type of character and character development means a lot. 
Felicity and her close friends and parents were very lovable (while being flawed!), they all grew and learned, and came together to form a big found family.

Yesssss!
Latinx transmasculine non binary pirate with ability to manipulate fire and ice tries to not make their father's mistake and make deals with El Diablo.
But some circonstances call for desperate measures...

I really enjoyed this book. A fun yet emotional ride. With interesting characters looking for their family and finding a new one.
It was so great to see Latinx pirates, especially since pirates are so often in the Caribbean and yet so rarely presented as Latine.

If I were to be a little critic, I'd say the slow-burn romance and the found family elements, two of my favourite tropes ever, could have been a little more present. They're there, but just slightly. And it could have been amped a bit. It would have made it even more emotional and tugged at all of my heartstrings.