There are lots of really great aspects of this novel in terms of diversity and representation - and some not so great,  bi-erasure/phobia being one of the most concerning. Also, worthy issues aside, the story itself, while compelling, does verge on the ridiculous at points. It's basically a love triangle with added sexual identity issues. However, it is written in a way that is less 'young people grappling with emerging sexuality' and more 'horny teens perving on/groping each other'. There are also a few other things that make the scenario just outside the range of my suspension of disbelief. The twists and the tension did keep me reading but it all got a little overcooked at the end and the momentum dissipated. For all the plot's messiness, the wrap-up seemed too simplistic, predictable, rushed and flat. For me, I was left with the feeling that this was nowhere near as progressive and insightful as it thought it was. Entertaining but far from perfect in terms of the issues it juggled.

Unfortunately I no longer wish to review this book as the first few chapters did not reel me in. Thank you for the opportunity.

This was a great story with a slow burn romance between the 3 main characters. We get to know the characters personalities straight away so it’s easy to read about these likeable characters.

Themes - teenage relationships, sexuality, families
Likes - realistic speech/narration (clear difference for each of the main characters), parents aren't conveniently absent
Dislikes - lack of communication
Other - diverse (sexuality, ethnicity, parents), slightly weird mystery element, interesting chapter titles

Odd One Out is told through three perspectives: Courtney who is in love with his lesbian best friend, Jupiter. New girl Rae who kind of loves both of them, and Jupiter who thinks she likes Rae but really likes Courtney.                             

One of the things I didn't like was the way Courtney appeared to have a sense of ownership over Jupiter as if, despite her being unobtainable, she is meant to be his

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster UK Children's and Nic Stone for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a review.
I will be honest, this has been on my netgalley shelf for some time now but I ended up falling behind on ARCS, so I am having to refrain from requesting new ones until I am up to date.

This novel is told in 3 different sections and 3 different characters perspectives.

Courtney “Coop” Cooper
Dumped. Again. And normally I wouldn’t mind. But right now, my best friend and source of solace, Jupiter Sanchez, is ignoring me to text some girl.

Rae Evelyn Chin
I assumed “new girl” would be synonymous with “pariah,” but Jupiter and Courtney make me feel like I’m right where I belong. I also want to kiss him. And her. Which is . . . perplexing.

Jupiter Charity-Sanchez
The only thing worse than losing the girl you love to a boy is losing her to your boy. That means losing him, too. I have to make a move. . . .

One story.
Three sides.
No easy answers.

*Yes I did have to borrow that from Goodreads.

Ok so, I wanted to give this a higher rating, the internal suffering that both Rae and Jupiter were going through was actually heart breaking. I could see this being something that many adolescents could relate to.

But I did have to drop it to a 3 because I just could not agree with Coop being “in love” with his best friend despite knowing she wasn’t interested in the male gender.
It is one thing to have a crush and then find out that you aren’t their type, but to constantly fantasise about her is creepy.
I myself have had a crush on someone but when he came out and started openly dating men, I didn’t continue to think “oh well maybe one day he’ll change his mind”.

My favourite perspective to read from was definitely Jupiter’s, she was so well written, and you could see just how much she was struggling with her feelings, especially after labelling herself as one sexuality for so long, it was very realistic to see the confusion she was feeling and then the worry about how people would react towards her.

Sexuality definitely isn’t black and white, and I am so glad that Jupiter spoke up for herself and tried to explain her decision to her peers.

They definitely weren’t all perfect friends, there was a lot of leading each other on, lying to each other, using one and other, but they did manage to come out the other side better people (I’m not condoning their actions and wouldn’t recommend following in their footsteps).

This is definitely a coming of age story that I think people of all ages could relate to, even when thinking back to their own teen years.

I'd read Dear Martin and desperately wanted to read another book by this author! I was not let down!

Some key points I'd like to note;
- Once again you see things in a different light, and the author is able to do that in such an effective way
- All of the diversity!
- I love this writing style, it's just so easy to read
- The characters, MY GOD I loved them!

Overall I really did enjoy this.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing an Arc!

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster UK Children’s Publishing for a review copy of this book!

--

I think the first thing I should admit to in this post is *not* having previously read anything by Nic Stone (AKA I did not read Dear Martin-- it’s on my TBR list but I haven’t picked it up yet), so coming across her second novel Odd One Out was not a “biting my nails in anticipation for this author’s new release!” type of thing. In some ways, I feel like this puts me at a slight advantage. I went into this book knowing that I was looking at a teen/young adult contemporary novel centering on a love triangle that hinged on LGBTQ+ issues and I was there for it. After having finished the book-- am I still? I’m not really sure. 

Odd One Out is the story of two childhood best friends: Courtney (a young Black man who has been raised by his mother after his father died in a car accident) and Jupiter (a Latina girl who knew very young that her sexual interests were focused on girls and who was supported in this by her fathers and in her peers). When Rae moves to town with her father, the Courtney-and-Jupiter dynamic is thrown into chaos. But why? Because Courtney and Jupe have been ridiculously close their entire lives and Courtney is one hundred percent in love with his best friend, while Jupiter has stayed single and not really expressed any interest in dating. Jupiter becomes interested in a seemingly straight Rae, Courtney develops a possible interest in Rae as well, while never losing sight of his love for Jupe and their dynamic, and drama and feelings ensue. 

I’m going to try to keep this spoiler free, but as it is all about character dynamics and development, some minor stuff might be revealed-- fair warning.

Things I Loved:
-- The diversity in the novel is fantastic. I loved the representation and the support from characters on all sides (including peers/the seemingly “brah” dudes that Courtney spends time with). At times, it became a little bit utopian feeling, to be honest. It was removed from reality by virtue of the fact that Courtney defended Jupiter once when they were pre-teens and ever since, everyone has been cool (and apparently incredibly educated, with most of the characters dropping words like “heteronormativity” and “cis” and “pansexual” in conversations about sexual orientation). This struck me as incredibly unrealistic but I want it to be realistic, if that makes sense. 
-- The novel is split into three different books. You hear first from Courtney’s perspective, then Rae’s, and then Jupiter’s. Each section definitely has its own feel. I was worried in the beginning because Courtney’s voice is so… specific that I really had trouble moving through his book. But then the voice changes entirely when I got to Rae’s section (which was all focused around vocabulary and hundred dollar words because she’s obsessed with crossword puzzles). Jupiter’s section was like being dunked into her head entirely as the narration switches from “you feel” in the very beginning when Jupiter felt disoriented to “I feel” when she felt more grounded. This was a really, really cool way to approach telling this story and Nic Stone is clearly a talented writer to have such disparate voices all merge into one cohesive book. 
-- Jupiter’s voice. It was fun and energetic and really easy to read. 

Things I Liked:
-- The side story with Rae and Courtney developing their own friendship, based on a strange coincidence involving a mutual obsession (when they were children) with the same kids’ science television program. It felt eerie but realistic and was a very cool way to create this narrative that bound the two of them closely as characters. 
-- Adding Freddie Mercury to Jupiter’s telling was perfect. I loved that the song lyrics became integrated into that section and it was possibly something that made me love Jupiter’s section the most out of the three, even though I’m not a diehard “music is life” person. It just seemed to FIT really well with her characterization.
-- The side characters were basically all sweethearts and it was easy to like them all. The only person who appeared to possibly have any issue with a non-heteronormative world view was Rae’s father, and to be honest, we didn’t get much about his perspectives on things other than being a little bit startled. 

NOW. Here I usually go right into “Things I Didn’t Like” but this book left me kind of adrift afterwards, so I’m adding in a “Things I Question” section. 

Things I Questioned:
-- Odd One Out spun on an axis dictated by intersectional identities, coming to terms with who you are, and being queer (NOT that I am labeling a character against wishes expressed at the end of the book) and as I said before, I was extremely gripped by this premise. I absolutely hate it when reviewers or readers claim that something is racist or prejudiced simply because it has characters who EXPRESS these views. That is grappling with a social issue within a work of fiction and NOT being intolerant. So. That said, I really, really disliked the very obvious biphobia expressed by several of the characters (*side eye at Breanna*) that was not combated or challenged by any one else in the book. It happened on more than one occasion and it was quite distressing to see characters stand up for not labeling themselves or others and this thing and that thing but to not say to someone “hey, maybe talking about how you won’t date bi girls is a little bit prejudiced, so perhaps don’t, even if it is your own personal way of going about dating.” Now that I’ve got that out out my system….
-- I also still don’t know how to feel about the fact that so many fears of characters identifying  as LBGTQ+ were made real. It really took the story a few steps back. Even though my original ship sailed, the way it was done was uncomfortable and seemed to reinforce a lot of prejudices. 
-- The number of times some hetero-identifying characters are told that their feelings are invalid by LGBTQ+ characters. Jupiter struggles with this a lot; she’s pursued by many “straight” girls at the school but is a romantic at heart and definitely wants all of her “firsts” to be with one person and not to be someone else’s experiment and that is valid. At times, she’s harassed by one character in particular and that’s not good. BUT WHO IS JUPITER TO DECIDE THAT THEY’RE STRAIGHT. People often don’t have all their shit sorted out when they’re twelve and decide whether they like boys or girls or everyone or no one, and sometimes, stuff just changes. Jupiter simply tells Rae what she feels at one point, and I feel like nothing is really done to challenge Jupiter’s authority on who she thinks is straight. I cannot underscore how much this undermined so much of the book’s many important messages for me and it still makes my blood boil a little bit, thinking about it.

Things I Disliked:
-- So, obviously I disliked Jupiter’s apparent “queer stamp of approval” that I felt was laced through Odd One Out. I’ll leave that alone now. 
-- A lot of the characters do really terrible things to each other and all three of them hurt each other… sometimes in petty ways and sometimes in big ways. This isn’t necessarily bad by itself, but at least one instance of hurt comes from a character changing her mind so fast that it gave me whiplash (*glances at Rae*) and it really made it feel like the feelings were changed to fit into the story mould. 
-- There were quite a few disparate pieces that I felt didn’t really add anything to characterization, but were there to make a point about masculine or feminine interests. For example, Courtney is a male cheerleader and hangs out with other male cheerleaders. Why? They also played basketball together and that seemed a lot more in line with who I felt Courtney was than him being a cheerleader, so it seemed like it was to make a Point about social norms and mores rather than to say “he’s a super enthusiastic and bubbly person!” or anything else. 
-- Characters fell in and out of love really fast-- even the characters I felt were more emotionally mature. I just wish those characters hadn’t used the “L” word. 
-- I don’t know how I now feel, several days on, after reading this book. There were parts I loved and things I thought were hit perfectly… and then other things that seemed to strike the wrong note to such a high degree that it’s still reverberating for me. 

Odd One Out is definitely worth reading, but I can’t tell you whether or not you’ll love it or hate it at the end… because I can’t tell you whether I did. The experience of reading it was enjoyable, so if you like quirky characters and easy-to-read writing, then this book is worth a shot. If you like teen contemporary fiction, why not give it a go? If you’re a sucker for love triangles, this one is for you. If you’re looking for an incredibly nuanced book about queer identities, then Odd One Out might be your ticket… or it might leave you frustrated. 

3.5/5 stars

A great companion novel that is just as heartfelt and inspiring as the first. I love Nics writing style and emotions.

I found this book hard get in to if I'm honest. The concept of the story was okay; three high school kids dealing with their sexuality, past traumatic events, social identity, and everything else that comes with the dramas of high school. The message it's trying to put across is an important one but it's delivered in a very messy and over the top way.
You read the story from each main character's point of view: the Loveable Courtney, New Girl Rae, and Queen Superfan and out and proud Lesbian Jupiter (who is also a Feminist). It's very dialogue driven and I found it hard to keep up with who was meant to be speaking. I found myself backtracking pages to work out who said what and whose opinion was being voiced, which made it unenjoyable for me.
I did enjoy all the Queen references though!
Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Simon and Schuster UK for this advanced copy in exchange of an honest review.

I honestly loved this book. I found it really insightful about how fluid things such as sexuality and relationships can be. About how as more people open up and talk, the lines people follow can jump and change and you shouldn't be ashamed about who you are and who you love. The literal love triangle was something that showed me how complicated something as significant as love can truly be, especially when growing up in a time when you are still trying to find yourself. One thing that did throw me a bit was the split narrative, not that it was a bad thing, but I sometimes forgot who's point of view I was reading! I think I was far too engrossed!

A lovely, reassuring book for anyone who's ever felt like labels don't fit their sexuality. Much needed and important for some teens out there, no doubt. The characters were well rounded and distinct from one another and all the POC representation as well as the LGBT representation was wonderful.

There was a lot of focus on the relationships between the characters and it was the best part of the book as it was properly fleshed out and done well, with humour and warmth that made it feel realistic.

It was light on angst despite the premise being that of a love triangle, which was refreshing. There was a lot of discussion of sexuality and it was all very self aware, especially Jupiter's point of view. I did enjoy Coop's inner voice most of the three though.

This was a bit of a messy book for me. I don’t really like love triangles especially not when they’re the central focus of the novel, but this seemed different with people questioning their sexuality, etc, so I was willing to see where Nic Stone went with this. It seems wrong to say it was over the top, but it kind of felt that way. 

I also didn’t like the way some of the characters talk - a white boy using the word “dawg” every sentence is just embarrassing. My internal self just cringed is every time. And the fact Coop let him was just daft. 

I’ve heard amazing things about Nic Stone and her writing, and her debut novel was so well received but this one just fell flat for me I’m afraid.

I am sad to say that Odd One Out was not for me, I really struggled to connect with the characters and I found the pacing to be quite choppy. It was a very dialogue-driven story, which at times confused me over which POV was speaking.

It was messy but I feel like the message it was trying to give is very important. I just didn't love the execution.

This is a book about how complicated it is to navigate personhood, relationships, past trauma, identity, social pressure, and basically everything else you might find yourself having to deal with in addition to your daily life as a teen. Books like this are the reason I, in my mid twenties, love reading YA. Because sometimes this "typically teenage" struggle doesn't stop, or (some of it) is delayed until later, and seeing things through the eye of a teen can be both refreshing and healing.

We get three point of views in this book, not in alternating chapters but in three blocks. I wasn't sure about this choice at the beginning but it ended up being both the best and worst thing about the book.

🐣 Courtney "Coop" Cooper - Black teen in love with his best friend, deals with past trauma and loss, intends to keep a promise he made as a kid even though it seems impossible that the conditions will ever be right for that to happen.

🐣 Rae Evelyn Chin - biracial white/Asian new girl at school, people-pleaser, abandonment issues, not as straight as she thought. 

🐣 Jupiter Charity-Sanchez - Black out and proud lesbian, adopted daughter of two dads, caught between new and old friendship, number one fan of Queen.

First off, I thought that the POVs served their part of the story well, they also were distinct enough and didn't feel like an excuse to reveal things that the previous POV character didn't know. But as things got messy (more on this later), I couldn't help but feel that, a) I liked each POV less than the previous one; b) things had to be told instead of shown, and I couldn't detect character agency for the previous characters. 

Every main non-POV character felt like a plot device that served the current POV character. It was as if only because the focus had shifted on someone else, the other two's ambitions and personalities were forgotten. 

By the third and last POV, having previously been in the head of the other two POV characters, I couldn't recognize their actions as their own and they felt only driven by what Jupiter wanted, and worst of all, most of it was just for the sake of drama. Now look, I know everyone makes bad choices and I'm not against that at all. I feel like I need to point this out because I'm aware that there's a tendency to be less forgiving of POC characters as opposed to white ones when they do shitty things. But their actions, combined with the fact that the only POV I was reading from at that point wasn't giving me any reason to sympathize with any of them, made it really hard to enjoy reading the last third of the book, as opposed to the first one which made me laugh and love Courtney so much.

It's kind of hard to explain myself without spoilering anything so I'll leave it that: this book got messier and messier and if you're easily frustrated it could affect your enjoyment by a pretty big factor

A list of things I didn't like paired with things I did like:

• I think having two questioning queer people in one YA book is amazing. The questioning queerness was the strongest point of this book and the reason despite all of its flaws this is a three star for me.

○ While it's great to have different people question and explore their sexuality in different ways, some of the surrounding queerness (in side characters) was sometimes something that didn't sit well with me. For example, a lesbian girl says she doesn't mess with bisexual girls who have "touched the D" or something like that. This is something that might be called out later but not right away and I didn't see the point of this. Another example of something that was personally a bit hurtful to see was the assumption from Jupiter's part that every girl who wanted to "experiment" with her was actually straight. For being so openly against heteronormativity, she sure assumed that straight is the norm.

• The talk about labels came late but it was powerful and important enough to somewhat fix that ending for me. Labels can change and it can be scary to change them or to go without for a bit, regardless of your experiences with your previous labels.

○ This might be me overthinking things, but at some point I felt like a correlation was made between being attracted to one specific gender through attraction to their genitalia, and even discovering said attraction because of uhh...having seen their genitals. This felt cisnormative and I think too much focus was put on body parts.

• All books need as many Queen references as this one.

○ This is not exactly a thing I didn't like (at least until some point) but I need to point out that this is a love triangle, and not the best one I've read, but it's a love triangle among queer teens of color, which is something that I'm glad got its own spot in YA.

So overall, would I recommend this book? It depends on what you're looking for and your tastes (who would have thought?!), and I hope my review gave you an idea whether you might like this or not.

Odd One Out was a complicated novel to rate for me, to say the least.
I am incredibly torn. On one hand, I enjoyed the book despite it going against my every expectations. On the other, I kind of wanted to tear my hair out at some of the scenes, biphobic phrasing and awkward wording.
I don't know if it's Cassandra Clare's influence or what, but I felt like this was going in a polyamorous direction (which I would honestly have loved because I think it's about time YA explores this instead of NA's attempts to turn it into the sex-craze of the century).
So, while I loved the aspect of questioning your sexuality in this story, I also felt a bit baited by the synopsis, like it was lying to get me to read this book? There are also some transphobic comments and biphobia moments that I take serious issue with and that I just - cringed at. Not to mention some of the wording when it came to arousal - "strangeness down in my secret place" reminded me very uncomfortably of Fifty Shades of Grey, so that chapter was a goner for me.
While I enjoyed Jupiter and Coop's perspectives most of the time, Rae just wasn't my cup of tea. But hey, that's not unusual for multiple PoV, there are always some you don't connect with. I did love Coop, though. He was a funy, kind of boy next door character that had his own charm.

All in all, this book was nice but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to teens who are questioning their sexuality. I do think we need more rep for that in books, but this one had some harmful messages especially concerning being attracted to trans people that I just don't feel are conducive to the whole biphobia problem in our society.

I absolutely loved 'Dear Martin' by Nic Stone, so I was both excited and nervous about reading 'Odd One Out': hoping it would live up to my high expectations but worried it wouldn't.  I shouldn't have worried.

Whilst this book didn't have the strong political themes of the first, it had equally important messages about sexuality and identity. It also had some fantastic characters! With the novel being told from the three perspectives, I was engaged from beginning to end.  I'm not ashamed to admit I completely fell in love with Coop from early on, and was more than once annoyed at the female characters.  But, when it got to Rae's chapter and then Jupiter's, I was obviously given a greater understanding of where they were coming from and why.  Although I still loved Coop until the very end.

I'm not a huge fan of relationship/romance based novels, but the varying perspectives of this book definitely helped sustain my interest and I would definitely recommend it.

I absolutely loved this! It felt so honest and real, and I feel like a lot of people can relate to it. At first I didn’t know what to think but the multiple perspectives definitely added to the story!

I loved Dear Martin, so I hoped that Odd One Out would be equally as great. Unfortunately, I don’t think it is.

While I do think the book does a good job of showing how confused some people are about their sexuality, and there are some funny moments, I think there were a number of problems too. The biggest issue is there are both bi and transphobic comments made, and what could be a teachable moment to show why these comments are hurtful and wrong, instead is not dealt with at all. For a book with LGBT characters it’ very disappointing.

I think the way Nic Stone gave the 3 different characters very different voices was brilliantly done. You could instantly get into the head of the character.

To everyone who's sick and tired of the old overused love triangle trope: stop right there, and pick up this book.

I hate love triangles. They're usually pointless and I don't care if the Chosen-One-heroine chooses the Bad-Boy-with-a-dark-past-and-a-heart-of-gold or the Geeky-Best-Friend-who-was-in-love-with-her-the-whole-time-but-she-was-too-oblivious-to-notice. And this is why I love Nic Stone: her books are modern. She reinvents the love triangle trope, and not just because it's bisexual, but also because all of the characters involved are equal in the plot, and mostly because the triangle is relevant. It's not just about romance, suspense, drama, or anything. Odd One Out is about fitting in, with the others, with your friends, with your family, and the three characters all wonder: "What if the other two get together? How will it impact my place in our group? Will they shut me out? Or be a third wheel?" There's an actual question that will resonate with a lot of teens and adults alike because who has never felt out of place before?

There aren't a lot of questioning characters that I know of, so I'm very glad this book had two. It can be pretty tough, not being able to figure yourself out, and I thought it was handled really well. Of course, I realized why when I read the author's note. I'm very grateful Nic Stone allowed us to see this part of her. Regardless of their sexuality, she crafts endearing characters and I loved them, even (and especially) Brit and Golly. I love me some dudes supporting their "brahs" and I want friends like this, gosh! They're so kind, they give great and honest advice, they support, they don't judge, ... Courtney, Rae and Jupiter are so, so lucky to have them.

I did notice two things I was a bit disappointed about: the first one is Rae, in the sense that she didn't really get to find her place with her family. There was the occasion but it didn't really happen and I felt like it was a missed opportunity to show another group in which she was questioning her place. The other thing was the ending, because I felt one of them had been a bit left out to be the "odd one out". I also need to mention a biphobic comment from a side character that doesn't get challenged. I wish Jupiter had at least thought it wasn't right.

But in the end, it's a very solid book and I'm glad I read it. It confirms Nic Stone is a skilled writer and I'm looking forward to reading whatever she writes next.

Thank you so much to Simon and Schuster UK and Netgalley for allowing me to read this book!