Only Mostly Devastated

The sweetest LGBT book I’ve read in a long time!
I absolutely loved the characters, the friendships, the relationship Ollie had with his family.

All the characters were incredibly well written, although I would liked to have seen one chapter from Will’s perspective.

I think this book is great for a slightly younger audience who are possibly going through similar experiences!

Let's be real, it was never going to be that hard to sell me on a queer retelling of Grease. That's like my perfect pitch. However, I was worried that the actual book wouldn't live up to my expectations. But not only did it live up to them, but it blew them out of the water.
This book follows our main character Ollie, who was had the perfect summer whirl wind romance with the lovely Will. However, when his parents decide they are moving to their vacation location, Ollie has to start a whole new school for his senior year, and if that wasn't bad enough, he's also being given the silent treatment by Will. That is, until he sees Will at his new school. We follow Ollie as he tries to make new friends, fit into a school that's not quite as liberal as his old one, deal with his Aunt who is sadly dying from cancer making him an almost full time baby sitter, and navigate a very on and off relationship with Will.
What I Liked:
-Ollie. He had such a strong voice, and I connected with him almost instantly. He was a quintessential Gen Z teenager, and his inner monologue as well as his dialogue felt so natural and never felt forced. He was awkward, and passionate, and flawed, and funny, and the perfect protagonist.
-The side characters. There are a lot of characters in this book, but they truly all felt like real people. They were so well fleshed out, and nothing ever felt forced like Gonzales was trying to make them seem "relatable". Ollie has an interesting friendship group that develops really well as we get more and more information about them, and even his young cousins felt real.
-The romance. This was the perfectly balanced romance. It was full of angst, soft moments, arguments, romantic gestures and all of it came together to be a romance I rooted for with my entire being. I thought it was really great how many flashbacks we got to their summer romance. So often we're just told that a couple have been together for X amount of time, but we don't really care because we don't get to see any of it. But we got to see both their past and present romance, which really helped to develop it. I just loved this romance so much.
-The exploration of family and grief. I don't really have much to say on this, but I thought it was done really well and it made me cry... quite a bit.
-The emotions. This book made me feel every emotion under the sun, I laughed, I cried, and smiled like an idiot. It was a total rollercoaster, and I loved every second of it.
What I Didn't Like:
-It's really only one thing, and that's that there was a sort of non consented outing. I just really prefer all outings to be 100% the characters choice.
Overall, this is an absolute must read of 2020, and I will be buying a physical copy as soon as I can. I'm almost positive this is going to be on my favourite books of 2020 list and it's only the first week of January!

When a book comes along that's billed as 'Simon Vs The Homosapien Agenda meets Grease', there are only two appropriate reactions:

1. Squealing and flailing with excitement, shortly followed by...

2. ... that sinking feeling as you realise no book can possibly live up to the promise of that description.

Well, I am delighted to tell you that not only does Only Mostly Devastated live up to the promise, in some ways it exceeds it. While the 'Grease, but make it queer' vibe is felt more strongly at the beginning and fades as the book goes on, this is, if anything, for the better, allowing the characters and plot to stand on their own rather than the reader constantly playing 'spot the comparison'. And about those characters... while a slight (tiny!) criticism would be that the supporting characters aren't always entirely fleshed out, this didn't matter to me as I loved the voice of Ollie (our Sandy) so very much. Lara (Rizzo) is also a great creation, managing to walk that fine line (as the original character does) between biting sarcasm and vulnerability. Meanwhile, it was so refreshing to read queer YA where there's more going on for the protagonist than just being LGBTQ. Shock horror, queer folk are actually fully rounded people with whole entire other stuff going on in their lives aside from coming out! The major sub-plot involving Ollie's aunt Linda and her cancer diagnosis was beautifully and movingly written, and I loved seeing a teenage character relating to their family in such a caring way (the scenes where Ollie babysits his young niece and nephew are especially cute).

But at the heart of this book is the will-they, won't-they romance between Ollie and Will, who - following a summer-long fling while both on vacation - find themselves in an awkward position when the resolutely out and proud Ollie unexpectedly transfers to the same high school as closeted uber-jock Will. Gonzales does such a great job of making Will likeable, even when you want to scream at him to stop being such a dude bro, and that ending... that ending!!!! Suffice to say I was an absolute mess of tears and smiles for about the last 30 pages.

While not perfect (I felt the plot about Niamh's weight and dieting was poorly handed and would have benefited from a fat sensitivity reader), Only Mostly Devastated is already on course to be my favourite YA of 2020. Very highly recommended.