Type: book. Author: Becky Albertalli. Publishing year: 2017. Genre: YA fiction, romance, contemporary, LGBT.
Rating: Goodreads: 4.02
Premise: Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love—she’s lived through it twenty-six times. She crushes hard and crushes often, but always in secret. Because no matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful. Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly’s totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie’s new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. Will is funny and flirtatious and just might be perfect crush material. Maybe more than crush material. And if Molly can win him over, she’ll get her first kiss and she’ll get her twin back. There’s only one problem: Molly’s coworker Reid. He’s an awkward Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?
REVIEW:
What is it with YA and their cringy sinopsis?
This book has me even more torn that last weeks, for completely opposite reasons.
Let’s talk positives first:
LGBT representation, diversity and body positivity were everywhere in this book, it was both in the background and part of who the characters were without defining them completely and that is not something that will ever surprise me with Albertalli.
I wish the plot had been clearer because I felt like I was reading with the only purpose of finishing the book. There was nothing for me to look forward to. I’m not sure if that was the idea, showing Molly’s confusion and reluctance was so strong that she was not sure herself what was going to happen or where things were going.
It was a bit boring having nowhere to go. Will was the main goal? Or was it Reid? The wedding? Fixing things with Cassie? Changing her grandmothers mind? Or maybe aunt Karen’s? No idea. So many subplots and they all resolved kinda poorly.
Molly as a character was as likeable as any 17 year old. Not very at most times. Being inside her head was obviously a big Ode to Self but I wasn’t expecting anything different, no matter what we say we primarily care about ourselves and there’s no need to deny that. Especially at that age.
I feel like there were so many characters in this book, and the pacing made every interaction seem so vague, that I didn’t get to care about any of the characters. Maybe Abby, but we knew her already (if you read Simon vs the homo sapiens agenda).
I never cared about Will. Molly kept talking about how sweet and nice he was but I never saw it, and I was inside Molly’s head. So, what did I miss?
It seems like we should assume the characters traits and personalities by the things they like, which is everything Molly drops here and there about them.
Cassie was such a terrible person. I found it hard to care when she and Molly fought. Cassie was just bad, and she had the nerve to get mad when Molly did things to her that she had done to Molly before. Absurd, didn’t like her at all.
But the one thing that stood out the most to me was the fact that Molly seemed to live on the internet and yet she had never, ever, not even out of curiosity (and she must be curious about these things since she is so obsessed with boyfriends, and the mechanics of kissing and sex), googled porn or what a penis looked like.
The first time she saw a naked dude was John Lennon on a vinyl cover????? How are these kids 17 and have 0 curiosity? Made no sense to me. The lack of teenagerism was very strange. The most teenager thing they did was drink without telling anyone.
There are some lines in this book that made me want to punch myself, but if you re-read the previous paragraph you can imagine is because Molly just knows so little about so many basic things. I shouldn’t care about boys because those are things feminist don’t care about and I am one?????????? Baffled me.
OH I JUST READ MY NOTES.
HOW ANNOYING IS THE SCENE WHERE HER CHILDHOOD CRUSH, OR CRUSH NUMBER 8 (I can't even remember), OH SO HAPPENS TO BE AT THE WEDDING, BE GAY AND TELL HER THAT IF HE HAD EVER BEEN INTO GIRLS SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN IT. He is the book for less than a minute and he does all that.
I started this review with the intention of being nice but I realized I had a lot I didn’t like.
Overall it’s a short book but I had to push myself through it because I never found out why I had to be invested in the story even though it had every element it needed to be good. Every element except a plot. Not Albertalli’s best.
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