So enjoyable: The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

Title: The Upside of Unrequited
Author: Becky Albertalli
First published in May 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, Romance, LGBT+
Source: Purchased paperback
Rating:

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, 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, and there’s absolutely no way Molly could fall for him. Right?

“But you know, there’s an upside here. Because when you spend so much time just intensely wanting something, and then you actually get the thing? It’s magic.”

It’s been a hot minute since I read this, but let’s try to scrape up some thoughts. 

Molly has had 26 crushes in her life. She’s never gotten to really know any of these boys, and none of them ever knew of her crush, so nothing has come of any of them. Molly scared of rejection, and most of it revolves around how she feels undesirable because of her weight. So she’d just rather not try than to try and fail and be humiliated. I think a lot of people can relate to this feeling, no matter the root of the issue. 

They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera

Title: They Both Die At the End
Author: Adam Silvera
First published in September 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, LGBT+
Source: Audiobook (Storytel)
Rating:

On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure and to live a lifetime in a single day.

“I’ve spent years living safely to secure a longer life, and look where that’s gotten me. I’m at the finish line but I never ran the race.” 

Beautiful cover alert!

I think I’ll have to give up on trying to catch up on reviewing all my reads. I’ll just catch up with the most recent (English) ones. So sadly that means I’ll be skipping the review of More Happy Than Not, and instead only review this one, even though I liked MHTN better. 

They Both Die At the End is similar to More Happy Than Not in the sense that they’re both kind of science-fiction-y. And they’re both really tragic. In this one, every person is called by a company called Death-Cast on the day they’re doing to die. You don’t know how you die or why, just that sometime within 24 hours you will be dead. How do the Death-Cast people know who’s dying? We don’t really know, but it’s not the point either. 

A Mix of YES and WTF: Release by Patrick Ness

Title: Release
Author: Patrick Ness
First published in May 2017
Tags: Young Adult. Contemporary, Magical Realism, LGBT+
Source: Purchased hardcover
Rating:

Inspired by Mrs Dalloway and Judy Blume’s Forever, Release is one day in the life of Adam Thorn, 17. It’s a big day. Things go wrong. It’s intense, and all the while, weirdness approaches…

Adam Thorn is having what will turn out to be the most unsettling, difficult day of his life, with relationships fracturing, a harrowing incident at work, and a showdown between this gay teen and his preacher father that changes everything. It’s a day of confrontation, running, sex, love, heartbreak, and maybe, just maybe, hope. He won’t come out of it unchanged. And all the while, lurking at the edges of the story, something extraordinary and unsettling is on a collision course.

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“When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing that I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead…the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

Okay, so, people have mixed feelings about this book. It reminds me of The Rest of Us Just Live Here in the sense that it’s somehow both contemporary, and fantasy.

The contemporary every-day aspect of Release is the biggest part of the book, but it’s interrupted by short chapters of a truly bizarre tale about a dead drug addict looking for her killer and… a faun? I don’t know, it’s weird, and I admit I didn’t pay enough attention to it in the beginning so it went over my head a little. I’m sure if I read it more carefully I’d get it, but alas. There’s some Deep and Metaphorical Meaning here, but honestly, I just care about Adam’s storyline.