In Nic Stone's latest, we meet Courtney, Jupiter and Rae, three friends who have got a lot to figure out. About each other and about themselves.

One story. Three sides. No easy answers.

Feels sorta cliche to say, but this definitely is a book I wish I had when I was younger. It was real. It was messy. Sometimes it was Real Messy. And I loved every bit of it.

Courtney Cooper and Jupiter Sanchez have been both best friends and neighbours since they were both seven years old. Despite his efforts to hide it, he can't help being hopelessly in love with Jupiter. But a relationship with her is not on the cards and Jupiter has been out of the closet for almost as long as she has known Courtney. When new girl Rae Chin moves to town Courtney thinks he's finally found a girl to fall for that isn't Jupiter. The only problem is, Jupiter is falling for Rae too.

I read Nic's other book Dear Martin earlier this year and absolutely loved it, so, to say I was excited to read Odd One Out would be an understatement. After reading the synopsis I was raring to get into it. However, I don't know if it was because I set my expectations high or not, but this book fell flat for me.

The diversity in Odd One Out was something that I really did enjoy. As someone who is always on the look out for books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and people of colour I was instantly impressed with this. Our three main protagonists were all characters from different ethnicities, and two of them were each questioning their sexualities (which was probably the most realistic thing in this book). There was also some emphasis on labelling yourself. What happens when you realise that the label you chose for yourself doesn't fit who you are anymore? And what if you don't even want to stick a label on who you are? All really important stuff that can tie into real life today.

However, the diversity was probably the only thing that I did enjoy about Odd One Out. I felt that the author tried to fit so much into 300 pages that I couldn't get to know the characters all that well and also, because of this the plot also suffered if truth be told. The plot, in my opinion was rushed and very underwhelming. I thought one of the main plots was going to be about Courtney and Rae's adventure but this was soon forgotten about.

The story itself is told through three POVs of Courtney, Rae and Jupiter. Normally I would love multiple POVs but because everything seemed so rushed I just couldn't appreciate it. Despite being stuck in the minds of these characters for approximately 100 pages each, I never felt like I got to know them all that well - as previously stated. The drama between all three of them was very messy, and could have been resolved if they had all just talked to each other about their feelings. This did make for pretty hard reading. If I was going to say who's POV I liked the most I would probably say Rae - she felt like the most realistic character. Questioning who you are if something that we all have done so I felt like she's the character that readers would be able to relate to the most.

The writing style was also something that I struggled with, which made the reading experience rather uncomfortable. The voices of each character at times just seemed very unrealistic and at times quite cringey and at times I couldn't take it seriously. Also, there were times when action quotes were used to decipt actions such as; *cue pause*. This was quite distracting.

Despite having a fantastic emphasis on diversity, identity and the struggles teenagers face with regards to sexuality, Odd One Out really didn't deliver what I thought it was going to. The plot felt rushed, the characters just weren't fleshed out enough and overall it just felt very unrealistic. Which is such a shame as I really did want to like it.

More a 3.5.

From the bestselling author of Dear Martin comes a new story of old friendships, new crushes and the path to self-discovery and it’s good.

It’s a realistic book, and the characters really do feel like they connect together throughout this book, Jupe’s and Coop’s relationship is a really well built one that works well in this book and the building plot between the two allows for the two characters to work well in this book.

Though I’m not a fan of the writing style within this book and certain things that are put in this book (the biphobia for example, I don’t feel is really called out in this book at all for example) the plot does feel like it could happen in this book in a high school even though I feel like this book could have explored so much more (looking at you polyamory).

It’s a great book with a strong YA story that has a pretty feel good ending.

I have complicated feelings about this book. Odd One Out was my first read by Nic Stone and it sounded like a fun and diverse contemporary and I’m all here for that. If I had a great time reading it overall, I also had some issues with it.

Told from three point of views in three different parts, Odd One Out alternates between Courtney, a straight black teenager in love with his best friend, Jupiter ; Rae, a biracial Korean/Irish teenager new to the city and questioning her sexuality ; and Jupiter, a biracial black character with two dads, who is into girls. I absolutely loved the diverse cast of this book and how each of them had their own, individual voices thorough the book. I enjoyed them all – I feel like I could relate a bit more and find bits of myself in Rae, but I also really liked Courtney’s voice. I had some issues with Jupiter, though, where some of her actions infuriated me a little bit, to be honest. I also had a small issue with her chapters’ writing, where the narration switched from “you” to “I”.

One thing I appreciated about this book is how complex it was: it showed the complexities of relationships, sexuality, feelings, it deals with labels and talks about how confusing it can be and how it’s okay to be questioning it, to change, to grow, too and I appreciated that so much, because we really need these kind of books.

All of that being said, I had some issues with the way things were handled in this pretty complex love triangle. I had so much trouble with Jupiter’s attitude and her actions at times, though I could try to understand it, I just… I had trouble with it all. I’m not going to expand too much on other points, regarding some biphobia and some lines that just felt wrong and just, never called-out. On that topic, I’d invite you to read Destiny’s review of Odd One Out (https://howlinglibraries.com/2018/10/13/odd-one-out/), as well as Kathy’s review of the book (https://booksandmunches.com/2018/10/22/review-odd-one-out/), too. Both reviews are #ownvoices reviews regarding the bisexual aspects of the story and their point of views and issues on that book are important to read, too 🙂

Overall, Odd One Out was still a book I enjoyed reading – it was a quick, entertaining read and I liked the questioning rep a lot, too, but I unfortunately can’t close my eyes on some issues and therefore can’t rate it higher.

[this review will be up on my blog, acquadimore.wordpress.com, on 10/23/2018]

Odd One Out is a book about how it's like to be a questioning teenager in a world that doesn't like people who do not fit into a box. I don't think I've ever read anything similar and I really appreciated what it was trying to accomplish, but I'm not sure it succeeded.
It follows three characters:
➡️ Courtney Cooper: straight black boy in love with his best friend, even though he knows she will never feel the same way because she's a lesbian.
➡️ Jupiter Charity-Sanchez: biracial black girl who has two dads. She's Courtney's best friend, but she doesn't know about his feelings. She's also falling for the new girl in her school - who may or may not be into girls.
➡️ Rae Evelyn Chin: biracial Irish/Korean, questioning, the youngest of the three. She realizes she has a crush on both Courtney and Jupiter, even though she's still not sure about how to label herself.

This book was divided into three sections, each around 100 pages and following a different character. I didn't always love the writing - the dialogues felt a bit forced and the pacing was off sometimes - but I liked this format, I thought it was an interesting choice.

This book is about questioning your sexuality and falling in love, and it also approached topics like being biracial, grieving a family member and divorce.

Odd One Out is just as messy as questioning their sexuality can be for some teens, and that's both its main strength and weakness. Questioning isn't straightforward and it isn't uncommon for teenagers - especially the ones who are in denial - to hurt other people's feelings in the process. I've seen something like this happen in real life, and the situation was maybe even messier than this one. I found this aspect of Odd One Out very realistic; in a way, this book is about how heteronormativity, biphobia and label policing hurt questioning teens.
But while it did at least attempt to address heteronormativity and label policing, it never seemed to really try with the biphobia, and I think it should have.

Odd One Out has a lot of biphobia in it. It goes from subtle bi-erasure to a character stating that she doesn't trust bisexual girls, and none of it is ever explicitly called out. While I never got the impression that I was supposed to agree with any of it, it was still not great.
I can't say it's unrealistic, but the unchallenged biphobia has the potential to be hurtful to the demographic this book is aimed at. I wish this book had tried to challenge it more explicitly.

On the other hand, I really liked most of the ending, because of the point it made about label policing. When a certain character mentions they are attracted to multiple genders, they immediately get told they have to identify as bi. I think any reason for not choosing a certain label should at least be respected, no matter what we think of it, and I liked that the label-policing person was quickly shut down.
I would have liked this scene more if the character who chooses to not id as bi hadn't said that the next GSA meeting would be about negative stereotypes that affect bisexual people, because at the end of the book they still seem to think that bi people can't date non-binary people.

There were two other things that made me uncomfortable about this book: the scene in which a minor begs a twenty-year-old for sex while tipsy and then they have sex, which I don't really know how I feel about (...but I didn't like it), and how much the three main characters were using each other. However, I did end up liking how this last thing was handled.

I recommend this book if you're looking for a story about questioning teenagers of color, but only if you don't have a problem with the biphobia not being challenged explicitly or any of the things I listed.
However, if you do not like love triangles, this probably won't work for you anyway - Odd One Out isn't about a typical YA love triangle by any means, but it has three times more miscommunication than the average triangle. I wouldn't recommend this to those who don't like reading about teens being messy and often hypocritical.

Odd One Out is a coming-of-age story which explores friendship, love and self-discovery. Through her telling of the story, Nic Stone triumphs with her representation of race and sexuality, the complex nature of discovering who we truly are and the reality that is the fluidity of labels.

Courtney and Jupiter have been best friends for years. From the outset, we learn that Coop feels something more in spite of Jupiter’s attraction to girls. However, circumstances grow to become more cumbersome when Jupiter’s new best friend Rae comes to dinner. Not before long, two becomes three and the group dynamic shifts. Attractions blossom and soon, we have what is the epitome of the complicated love triangle. Oh how it was riveting to read. Friendships turn into crushes, crushes turn into secrets and secrets ultimately lead to heartbreak, tension and betrayal.

Stone seamlessly writes from each of the characters’ perspectives, the three of them endowed with their own distinctive character traits. Courtney the big shot basketballer with a heart of gold, Rae the walking-talking dictionary, and Jupiter the Freddy Mercury super fan. They’re raw, real and relatable. Even Coop’s two best guy pals Brit and Golly charmed me with their witty one liners and cool-boy idiolects.

‘now I can feel a wave of crap-I-have-to-fix-it word vomit roiling in my gut.’

This is one messy story. Nonetheless, this chaos encapsulates the reality of attraction and the confusing nature of labels. Stone portrays characters’ feelings so well that it reminds me of how stressful crushes can be: the mind games, the overthinking, the ‘what if’s.

Reading this story, you will be in a perpetual state of confliction. All the characters are so loveable that you’ll want them all to be happy. However, in this story, things don’t always go as hoped. There’s love, there’s loss, there’s heartbreak moments to heart-warming scenes. It’s messy and it’s true.

You’ll be gripped to the pages as you anticipate how the dynamic will pan out. This book truly is for everyone. It’s witty, relevant and perfectly explores the frustrating path of self-discovery. I couldn’t recommend this more!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for providing me with an eARC to read this in exchange for an honest review.

This was … disappointing.

Don't get me wrong: Odd One Out is easily one of the most diverse and honest books I've ever read. I was so excited to read about these three protagonists of colour, two of which are questioning their sexual identities. And there's so much important stuff in this book – about labels especially, how sometimes you might choose a label for yourself that doesn't fit anymore when you learn more about yourself, and how this can be pretty terrifying.

On the other hand … the author tried to do too much in one book. In only 300 pages, three stories are told. Even though their lives are intricately intertwined, Courtney, Jupiter and Rae are still very different from each other, come from different backgrounds and struggle with different issues, and for a hundred pages each, we're stuck in their heads. But it never felt like I really got to know them. It was just messy, always and for ever so very messy, and I couldn't shake the feeling that all the drama could've been lessened, if not resolved, had they just talked to each other. (Seriously, though – why is no one talking to each other e v e r.) I always felt like their friendship – which was described as a pretty big, intimate thing – wasn't really genuine, because they kept lying to each other, or at the very least omitting pretty much all their true feelings. The side characters and families were two-dimensional at best, and I struggled to keep them apart.

While I loved the book for talking openly about identity struggles and sexuality in general, and while it did have some good moments, in the end it was just not enough. The plot fell flat, the characters fell flat, at times it felt uncomfortably preachy, and at the end … I was caught between "It's finally over" and "I'm already forgetting the names of the characters". Odd One Out is diverse, and quirky, and I quite like the resolution, but apart from that, it was rather unsatisfactory. 2.5 stars.

A beautifully written story/book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster UK for giving me the opportunity to read Odd One Out in exchange for my honest unbiased review.

I really enjoyed reading Dear Martin a lot, so when I saw Odd One Out was up for reviewing, I immediately went for it.
Again, I was pleasantly surprised. The story flows beautifully while it combats some very modern issues. Nic Stone really understands well what is living today and knows how to portray this into words.