Unfortunately, If This Gets Out just didn't do it for me. I love YA romance, but I feel like there was entirely too much information being thrown at me that had nothing to do with Ruben and Zach's predicament. It takes two paragraphs to explain something that should take two sentences max. It took forever for Ruben and Zach to be honest with each other, and then as soon as they develop a relationship beyond friendship/bandmate, a lot of details are glossed over.

While I wasn't impressed with this novel, I could see a younger audience enjoying it. It wasn't bad - it just wasn't my cup of tea.

This book is for everyone who loves boybands and fanfiction about them. This book was sweet at times and heartbreaking at others. You should be picking this book when it hits the shelves in december!

This book!!!!

If This Gets Out is a delightful story about a Boy Band (Saturday) and the pressures of being famous and hiding your true self. As the band embarks on their international tour, Ruben and Zach's close friendship evolves into a romance and they struggle with hiding their true selves as their management continues to give reasons why they aren't able to come out to the public. As they start to realize that they might never have the freedom they truly desire, they wonder how they can possibly move forward together.

This book was absolutely a delight! The relationship between Ruben and Zach felt very real and sweet. The way that they took control of the narrative surrounding their coming out was honestly powerful.

Although coming out narratives are done a lot in books, I think this was a really powerful version of that narrative that felt unique.

Rating: 3.5, dramatic, cute, and a lil angsty: If you want to read about a boy-band romance and the trials and tribulations of the music industry, here ya go.

I really enjoyed the music industry aspect of If This Gets Out. I felt the restrictions that Ruben and Zach (and Jon and Angel) had to tiptoe throughout. It was ridiculously unfair, and I’m sure that’s reality (it felt a bit like Taylor Swift v. Big Machine Records).

The pacing was what I struggled with the most. I think if this book was a bit shorter, I would have enjoyed it way more. But it wasn’t a quick read for me (even though some parts had me flying through); it seemed to drag on before something finally came up to speed it along.

Overall, it was a fun read. I’ll be real: I’ve read my fair share of boyband fanfiction back in my day, and this is exactly what I would have loved to read… back then. (I won’t say it reminded me of any band in particular, but…) It was a little too cheesy for me now, but I still enjoyed it! If you are wanting to read about a boy-band romance, this is exactly the book for you.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Review also posted on Goodreads.

I really liked this book! The boyband romance is something I never would have thought I'd see in a YA book that I totally enjoyed. I thought the romance was a bit rushed in hte beginning, and some of the drama seemed really out there, but otherwise I really enjoyed it. Too bad Saturday isn't real: I think I'd really love some of their music!

Thank to the publisher and netgalley for providing me with an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

If This Gets Out follows a boyband at the height of their career. Ruben, Zach, Jon, and Angel make up Saturday, an uber famous American boyband as they embark on their international tour. A tour which brings Ruben and Zach closer than ever.

So I’m gonna start with a bit of a disclaimer which is simply a reminder that this is my personal opinion and this book didn’t work for me but that it’s really just a personal tastes kind of thing not necessarily that I think that is a bad book. If I’m trying to look at it in an unbiased way (as much as anyone can) I’d say it’s a fairly decent if mediocre book. There’s some good stuff. The characters are interesting. The writing isn’t the best I’ve read but it’s far from the worst. Having read books from both authors separately I actually think their styles really meshed well in this and I liked the writing in this far more than in The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich. I just don’t think there’s anything special or fantastic about this book. I didn't really ship the main couple, I didn't love any of the characters, and there wasn't anything surprising about the plot - which is okay! Not every book has to be completely unpredictable, I just didn't personally find anything about this book particularly memorable.

In short, I’m not sure what this book was trying to accomplish. It wasn’t a cute fun rom-com or a swoon worthy romance. It was a book about a boyband that focused a lot on how controlling their management team is and how hard it is to be a boyband and how everything has to be a performance and all the pressure they're under constantly to be perfect. And that could've been really interesting but the narrative always danced around the more serious topics while at the same time, never letting you forget how awful everything was. The narrative made it clear that the management team was awful, it showed you time and time again how these characters aren’t allowed to be their selves (Ruben can't come out because it wouldn't be good for their image, Jon is the sexy one and must always act like it even though it makes him uncomfortable and so on) and showed you how they were cracking under the pressure but it never really dove into the subjects, it was just always something happening in the background.

And yet, at the same time, the way the management team controlled their lives was so heavy and heavy handed that it made it hard for me to enjoy this book. It was oddly depressing and draining to read because it was just one thing after another. There wasn't (as far as I remember/read) even one nice scene between Ruben and Zach that wasn't overshadowed by the cloud hanging over their heads that was management. I really wanted to love Ruben and Zach but it felt like the love story was bogged down under the weight of everything else. Just when I would start to ship them, something else would come along to make things even harder for them and these scenes really overshadowed the romance in my opinion.

There also wasn’t enough build up for the relationship for me. We didn’t get to see much beyond cliched conversations and their obvious attraction for each other. We didn't get to see a deeper connection or why they really liked each other. I was never convinced they were falling in love. They were said to be best friends but this was sort of just sprinkled in and there wasn't much build up to any of it. While all the characters were interesting and well-rounded they were still oddly lacking depth at the same time. This wasn't helped by the fact that the book contradicts itself a lot and doesn’t always do the best job of showing what a character is feeling. We’ll be told/shown they feel one way and then the next scene they’re saying they feel the opposite which was a little annoying.

What it comes done to for me is the way this book was written. I found it a little tedious to get through and hard to get invested in and I think it was because of what the authors chose to focus on. It was everything I wanted in theory - a queer boyband story where two members are secretly dating - but in execution it fell flat. I think this was trying to be a romance that also tackles serious issues but it missed the mark for me, leaning too much into the angst and drama of how micro managed the band was and how awful their management team was to them while the romance never managed to elevate it and make me feel hopeful about things.

Again though. This is just how it came off to me. I know a lot of people are already enjoying this. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad book but nothing about it worked for me.

Confession I DNF'd this at 69%. Normally, I never DNF a book I'm that far in but I just couldn't go through the angst that was coming up. It was too depressing and I was dreading picking it up and, honestly, it was making me anxious. I did flip through the remainder of the book but you know, take my review with a grain of salt knowing I didn't read the entire thing.

Review posted on goodreads on 6/19/21

Ugh, so good! This book gets all the stars! 🤩🤩🤩
I loved the characters, I loved the premise, it was just perfect!

Love story - Check!
Overcoming obstacles – Check!
Standing up for yourself – Check!
Boys Bands – Check!

If you like all three, then you need to check out If This Gets Out by @sgonzalesauthor and @caledietrich this coming December 2021! I know it’s early for a review…but I just loved this book. And it’s #pridemonth

What you’ll get is a sweet romance between two members of a popular boy band, pressure from band management to keep it a secret, a thoughtful exploration on behind the scenes complexities of a popular band, and a group of young men that want nothing more than to be themselves.

I may be in my 40s, but I'm now a Saturday fangirl! Just without the squealing 😊

Ruben, Zach, Jon and Angel are vivid and distinct characters and members of Saturday. The authors do a fantastic job showing the wonderful friendships and how they have each other’s backs. I wanted to be a part of the Mom Squad to support these boys!

I fought a lot of emotions with the depiction of the dark side of popularity in the music industry. It makes me pause to think of how often management teams stop seeing the young musicians as humans and only see profit. As a parent, I found it scary and infuriating. As a business woman, I was disgusted by the ethical violations for a dollar. It makes me think back to the boybands I loved as a teen. NKOTB, anyone?! I wonder if they went through the characterizations and identity suppression.

5 Stars – Don’t miss out!

Pub Date – 12/7/2021

Thank you to @netgalley @wednesdaybooks for the eARC in exchange for my review.

If This Gets Out is an engaging tale of a boy band named Saturday. Two of its 4 members are gay and form a relationship. One is only recently coming out, and his ruminations are intense and lengthy. Not saying it isn't likely that he would be so engaged with the idea of coming out, I still felt that less angst might have benefited the novel. It is rather long.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for my ARC of This Gets Out in exchange for an honest review - this one isn't out until December, but we should be reading queer stories all year long anyway!

Genre: YA, queer fiction
Pub date: December 7th

Ruben and Zach represent one half of Saturday, a mega-popular boy band. Ruben has known he's gay for a while now, but the band's management company has pressured him to remain in the closet. After a late night kiss helps Zach realize that he's bi, the two of them embark on a relationship. But will they ever be free to be themselves amid the pressures of fame?

I really liked the boy band aspect of this story - it reminded me a lot of NSYNC's legal battle with their manager, which was big news when I was a kid. These predatory and manipulative practices are commonplace, and I appreciate that attention was given to the darker side of fame. It was great seeing the members of Saturday work together to stand up for themselves and their beliefs.

Ruben and Zach's love story was very sweet - I loved how supportive they were of each other, especially how Ruben made sure to avoid pressuring Zach to come out if he wasn't ready. The other two band members, Angel and Jon, added some additional color to the story - each had his own issues to grapple with related to the industry.

I'm having trouble figuring out a rating for this one, as I loved the issues it covered and the characters. My one major complaint is that it felt about 100 pages too long. I'm not sure when YA non-fantasy books started being 400+ pages? Ruben and Zach's inner monologues were a bit long-winded, and I felt like I was waiting for the plot to really get going. And it did, eventually.

I'm glad I read this one, and I think lots of readers will love it - it just wasn't quite as good as Red, White, and Royal Blue or Boyfriend Material, two M/M romances I always recommend to friends. 3.5 stars rounded down for Goodreads.

Review posted to Instagram and Goodreads on 6/18/21.

It's been a few weeks since I read If This Gets Out and I've been thinking about this book every day since - how I liked it, and what the heck am I going to write in my review? Surely I have a lot to say since I really liked it? And I do, I just don't know how to say it without giving everything away, and I want everyone to read this & experience it for themselves!!

Firstly, I want to mention that I am a giant fan of Sophie Gonzales - both Only Mostly Devastated and Perfect on Paper were both five stars to me. I'm new to the writing of Cale Dietrich. So I was incredibly intrigued to see how their writing and narrative styles would work together. Would it feel too jarring? Would I enjoy one more than the other? The answer is no. Their writing blended so well together, the narrative felt cohesive through both character POV's. Their styles complimented each other, and they both brought a depth and nuance to Ruben and Zach's narrative voices.

Secondly, I was so excited to read a novel about a band?! I just LOVE that. I haven't found many books like it (please, feel free to drop recs) so I was incredibly excited. But this book was more than just seeing a boy band have a great time on tour with the occasional romantic trouble. Instead, this book peeled back the layers, examining what types of things go on behind the scenes. It showed the abuse that goes on within the music industry and did an excellent job doing it. It explored homophobia, racism, how the band members are treated more like a product than a person, the exhaustion, exploitation and the impact of that: the mental health struggles, turning to drugs/alcohol as a way to keep, and feeling isolated from a sense of self and family. The book really went through a journey showing all of this, it's impact, through the two pov characters. How they bartered ("I only have to hide myself for this long, then they'll let me come out") to the realisation that while they're under contract and selling well as who they've been branded as, that will never happen. Both POV characters do have different journeys with this - one has already reached that conclusion sooner than the other. But having them on different ends of that scale allowed for the conversation of how this is abusive to be had.

I really enjoyed the band dynamic, and I'm secretly hoping that we will get more of Angel and Jon's stories, because I would've LOVED to have also seen what was going on in their heads. I loved the humour between them all, the loyalty and the lengths they went to to protect each other, and my heart broke when they fought with each other - a consequence of the outside pressure pushing in on them. I don't want to spoil, but I really loved how the book ended for all of them.

I really loved Ruben and Zach and their romance!! It was painful at times, and I wanted to yell at them both for missing the obvious with each other, but it all paid off. The arc was there, and I loved it. They complimented each other, and the chemistry was there. Not wanting to spoil so this will be hard to say, but to sum up, one element I loved was that this also dealt with the issues in their relationships - i.e., setting boundaries.

Overall, this was a really great book. At the heart of it, it is about friendship, love, and being true to one self and others in midst of a world that is trying to tell you who you ought to be.

What I Liked
-I was a big boyband fan girl in my teenage years, so this book felt very familiar, which I loved. Like, I'm not convinced this book wasn't based off of One Direction.
-I loved watching Ruben and Zach's journey with their sexuality.
-The MOMS of this book, while not SUPER relevant the entire time, were BADASSES. Specifically Jon's mom.
-I LOVED the ebb and flow of this book - the plot line rose and fell VERY well.

What I Didn't Like/Wanted More Of
-Some parts seemed very stereotypical.
-I wanted more of Ruben's relationship with his mom.

You Should Read If You Like
-The Idea Of You

This book was a very sweet story! It included a first time queer experience, a getting together with your crush, some boy band drama, a secret relationship, and two separate POV’s so you get the whole story! I loved the way that Reuben would sometimes think that Zach felt a certain way, but we actually got to experience what Zach always really thinking and vice versa. The story was very wholesome, and I think that anyone who’s a big fan of any popular band would really enjoy this fictional inside look into the music industry and behind the scenes of a boy band. The story was adorable and I was rooting for #Zuben the whole time. My only complaint is that I feel like sometimes the characters didn’t have a realistic way of dealing with their feelings. They seemed to come to dramatic, life changing realizations and figure things out within 24 hours, which just seemed pretty rushed. Other than this, I enjoyed the book as a whole!

At this point, anything Sophie Gonzales writes is immediately on my TBR. I really loved this one, and the writing between Gonzales and Dietrich is seamless. It’s a little longer than I usually like my contemporaries but highly worth the read! December can’t come fast enough so I can hold a digital copy!

Okay so OBVIOUSLY I’m not the target demographic for this book. But I do have to admit if Harry and Zayn would have made the smoochy face there’s probably an 82% chance I would have been a One Direction fan. Because I am a pervert.

So the story here goes a little something like . . . .

"I SWEAR TO GOD - I NEVER FALL IN LOVE. BUT THEN RUBEN SHOWED UP AND ZACH CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT."

If you take a gander at the rating and “pre-reviews” for this upcoming release you’ll see it’s mainly full of shippers and stans and other words that Boomers like me don’t truly understand. I’m going to go ahead and give this a 3. I thought it did a pretty decent job of tackling coming out and how only the person who is actually coming out should control the hows and whens of that moment happening and also the pressures of being famous and having others in control of the narrative regarding the personal lives of those they represent. And also: DUH, it’s two boys kissing . . . .

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, NetGalley!

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 and it com[pletely blew through all my expectations. The story was so heart-warming yet so packed full with emotions of all kinds that I could not put it down and I'm so happy to say that I loved this book.

The star of the show (or rather the book) was by far the cast of characters. Of course, our narrators Ruben and Zach were easy to love despite their flaws, and watching their budding romance unfold was not always easy to read, but so so so worth it in the end. But besides these two, I appreciated how invested the story was and I as a reader were in the lives of the other half of the band, Angel and Jon. They were there every step of the way and even though the focus is mostly on Ruben and Zach, their stories were just as important and they were intertwined so perfectly into the storytelling.

Honestly, I'm only knocking a star off of my review because the plot was kind of messy or sloppy and the pacing was a tiny bit off at times. I felt like at about 150ish pages in, things slowed down a lot and I wished that it hadn't. It felt like we were building up to the peak of Zach and Ruben's relationship but they just kept getting pushed down (sadly), and it messed with the pacing in combination with the storylines of the other characters.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this book and it has definitely given me a hangover because I loved it so much. I would totally recommend this book because it is the perfect book for those who are fans of boybands (myself included) and want to get a behind the scenes look into their lives, including all the ups and downs that come along.

this entire book is so depressing and frustrating. maybe i'm tired of the gimmick because i was a part of the one direction fandom back in 2014, but my feeling of dread was constant throughout.

this book took the story details of gonzalez's writing that i don't tend to enjoy and the "tell don't show" that i've noticed in dietrich's writing.

i wasn't having fun for most of this book, and i think that's super unfortunate. even the cutesy relationship moments felt weird. the relationship happened too quickly and there was far too much emphasis on the management conflict. i would have preferred watching ruben and zach fall in love slowly and then a management conflict at 85% that gets resolved by 92% like the typical young adult romance contemporary structure. i don't think the structure is good per say, but i would have preferred it for this story, i think.

thank you to the publisher and netgalley for providing my review copy

If This Gets Out reads like fanfiction but in the absolute best way. As a once upon a time One Direction stan, I couldn't give this book any higher praise. I feel like I should restate that this book is not about One Direction or any of it's ships literally at all. But... it could be. And that added a whole other level to the story and my enjoyment of it. Clearly, you don't have to stan 1D or boybands to enjoy ITGO. It's a contemporary coming-of-age story that shows how ridiculous and exhausting the entertainment industry is. Especially, for Queer artists. I've been down enough 1D rabbit holes that there isn't much new to me, personally, but that also means I know how much research Cale and Sophie put into their book. I inhale everything Sophie and Cale write. It speaks volumes that I could clearly tell who wrote what characters. Give this book a chance.

If you enjoyed If This Gets Out I highly recommend Catch My Breath by M.J. O'Shea.


***Thank you so much to Wednesday Books for providing me with a review copy.***

Zach and Ruben are pretty good main characters, their romance is really cute. I really liked how they were always able to communicate and be honest with each other.
Angel and Jon are also interesting. I really enjoyed how Angel’s troubles were handled, and I wished Jon could’ve had a little more space, his side was the least explored. The friendship between the four boys was one of my favorite parts of the book, the scenes where they’re all hanging out are so sweet!
The story criticizes the music industry’s heteronormative mold, stereotypes of masculine behavior and looks, and how artists become products with no control over their own lives, specially with young artists.

I read this book under the recommendation of my students who were all eager for its release and I wanted the opportunity to read it ahead of time so I could request it for the classroom. Although I was excited for the book, it far exceeded my expectations. The romance between Ruben and Zach was so well-paced and I appreciated the different perspectives in coming to terms with their own sexualities. Not only does this give the reader someone to relate to, but also challenges the way one views our societal expectations of celebrities and media management. I felt that the inclusion of Angel's mental health storyline was relatable and a important message for readers of any age. While I anticipated that this would be a fairly typical romance, I left with so much more. I will be recommending this book for my classroom bookshelf and I am considering implementing it in our curriculum as a choice through our smaller group study "fun" reads at the end of the year.