Alice Oseman

Fereshteh “Angel” Rahimi lives for the Ark, an internationally famous boyband. They show her love is real when she can’t see it anywhere else in the world. When she and her friend Juliet finally get tickets to see the Ark live and meet them in person, Angel knows her life is finally going to make sense; she is finally going to be happy.
Jimmy Kaga-Ricci, frontman of the Ark, is losing control. He loves his fans (really, he does). He loves sharing his music worldwide. He loves the show more support he gets and the reassurance he gives as a famous, out trans man. He is living his childhood dream alongside his best friends. But the higher the Ark’s fame rises the more his anxiety consumes him, the more he has to play up the persona his fans fell in love with, and the more he’s cut off from his family and struggles with his friendships.
As the concert grows closer, Angel’s friendship sours, and her parents' doubts keep raising questions she can’t answer. Leaks to the press and the impending signing of a new contract widen the cracks in Jimmy’s closest relationships and swell his anxiety and paranoia to new highs. When an act of violence throws Jimmy’s and Angel’s lives together, it sets off a cascade that allows both of them to redefine themselves.

I didn’t connect with this one as much as some of Alice Oseman’s other books. In part, I think it’s because I have never really gotten the sort of fan culture that is the main focus of the book. Both the main characters have some interesting internal struggles – Angel with throwing herself into one interest to avoid the fact that she is dissatisfied and doesn’t know what she wants with her life and Jimmy with allowing something he loved to grow into something that leaves him trapped and cut off from everything else in his life. But it was hard initially to get attached to Angel when she was entirely defined by an uncomfortable and unexamined parasocial relationship. It also may have been because I wasn’t fully satisfied with the resolution of their character arcs. The ending started to do a lot rather quickly leading into what’s framed as a happy or at least hopeful resolution for all the characters, but I don’t know, it didn’t feel to me like I fully saw them reaching the place where the ending implies them to be, character-wise. That said, I enjoyed much of the middle section of the book as the characters and the nature of fandom (from its worst to its best aspects) were given more depth. I always feel like Alice Oseman does a good job at giving all her characters complete, rounded inner worlds that draw together their surface behaviors/thoughts/motivations with the underlying ones they might not recognize in themselves. show less

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but I found the first half of it to be very difficult to read. A big part of that is because as an asexual person myself, some of the thoughts and experiences Georgia has before she realizes she's aro-ace are exactly the same as ones I had before I realized. It pained me to reread these myself, and I kept wishing someone would just tell her already. However, it's exactly for that reason why I think this book would be great for anyone who is questioning their show more orientation, romantic or sexual, to read. Had I read this when I was younger, I may not have had so many experiences I ended up having, and I may have felt more seen.

Once she knew and began telling people/accepting herself, the book got much easier for me to read. I absolutely loved how she realized her friendships were so important and how she worked to show her friends how important they are. I especially loved how Rooney and Georgia realized they were platonic soulmates, destined to be friends for the rest of their lives.

Again, some of this book was hard for me to read, but I think it's incredibly valuable for those still figuring out who they are. show less

This well done YA novel is by the author of the charming gay graphic novel series Heartstopper. As she did there, she demonstrates insight and affection for her young characters who are striving to understand themselves and their sexuality. in this one Georgia and her friends Pip and Jason are in their first year at university. Georgia is a wonderful, sensible friend who is inexperienced in romantic relationships and sex and hopes to get on with it now that she's away from home. She show more eventually learns that love comes in many forms that do not necessarily involve sex or romance. Around her Pip (an out lesbian) and Jason (a pleasant undefined young man) and Georgia's vibrant roommate Rooney (heterosexual, but maybe not) are exploring and sorting out their own lives. The author has a keen ear for how young people talk, and a talent for creating believable, endearing characters. Besides enjoying the story, I learned a lot. The book has been selling well, and it makes me happy to think that a lot of young people are reading it.

P.S. The author is only 28 and already has established quite a track record. show less

The platonic relationships in this book literally make me melt with happiness. My library absolutely lied to the public by putting a romance label on the spine because romance makes no appearance whatsoever in this book and I absolutely couldn't be happier about it. The fact that a platonic relationship can be the most powerful, life-changing one you have is just so refreshing and comforting to me and I couldn't be happier to see it.

Frances and Aled both feel like they can be honest about show more their interests in geeky, off-the-wall stuff for the first time with each other and really enjoy the time they spend hanging out, watching tv, working on Aled's podcasts, and just doing nothing in particular. Frances has always felt like she had to be School Frances, the nerdy girl who's top of her class and spends every spare moment on homework and getting into Cambridge because she's good at school and she shouldn't waste that right? Aled has always been pressured by his mother to excel at school and get a proper university degree because that's the only path worth following. Their friendship allows them to start to work past the anxiety and stress and pressure that's heaped on them - by themselves, by family, by school, by everything around them - and figure out what actually makes them happy and where they actually want to be in life.

This book dealt a lot with the pressure to get good grades and go to university and follow a certain path in life, which any student can tell you is relentless and occasionally crippling. The thing that I really appreciated that this book did is that it looked at this pressure from multiple angles. You have Frances, who decided at 9 that she's going to Cambridge because she's good at school so she should take advantage of that and has worked relentlessly to get there, even if it means sleepless nights and panicked reviewing. Frances's mother would have been far less worried about her daughter if she had put less focus on her schoolwork and relaxed more. Then there's Aled whose mother pushed him onto the university track because that's the only life she thinks is worth living and she was ready to totally disown her daughter who didn't fit into that mold. But there's also Daniel, whose parents want him to just work at their store because that's more sensible but he truly loves studying biology and it's something he wants to be able to pursue but if he can't get the absolute best grades he won't manage because he doesn't really have parental support. And then there's characters like Carys and Raine who just are not academically inclined but feel pressured by parents or school or whatever to fit themselves into that mold and make themselves miserable in the process, even though there are other just as good options available to them. Just the fact that none of these students are feeling school anxiety in the same way, but they're all feeling it because that's basically how our educational system is now set up was addressed so well and felt so true.

This book was also hella queer and I loved it. Frances is bi and based on some comments she makes at various points I also read her as ace-spec. Aled is gay and demisexual and a lot of the anxiety he has to work through during the book can be traced back to him being unsure about being demi and what that would mean for his relationship. I was really happy to see his boyfriend be accepting of his identity even if he was angry about how Aled handled the situation by just running away and ceasing communication.

Basically, go pick up this book it's amazing and you won't regret it. show less