User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
4.5 stars
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The Written Review “And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved.”
Ollie just had
the perfect summer romance.Will was sweet, kind and genuinely seemed to "get" Ollie in all the ways his friends never did.
But...it's been a few days since he got back from visiting his Aunt and Uncle and
Will has gone silent. And then Ollie's parents drop the news that his Aunt's cancer has gotten worse and the whole family is moving to her house to take care of her.
“That's the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can't handle. We grow from these things.”
It's awful and Ollie can't stop thinking about it but on the bright side -
at least he will see Will again.But when that happens...it goes no where near Ollie's expectations.
In fact..
.it's devastating. “I’m really sorry.' He peeked at me, but I still didn’t reply. I mean, what could I say? That it was okay? Because it really wasn’t.
But, behind this cold exterior....Ollie's Will still exists - he can see his Will peeking out when others aren't around.
Does Ollie give Will another chance? Does Will even deserve it?
Ohhh man. This book was BRILLIANT.It had
all the right feels in all the right places.
Ollie is a precious snowflake and I will defend him with my life. He had such an incredibly fun perspective on life and it truly
brightened the scenes. I loved Ollie's love for music and his family - it truly
rounded out his character and endeared him so much more.
I loved Will's journey of acceptance and his development in this book.
The plot was just
the perfect slice of life - it had laughs, tears and made me want to hug the main characters and never let them go.
This is definitely going to be one of my favorites in the book.
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Rating: really liked it
I really, really enjoyed this!! I do wish we had gotten a little more show and a little less tell in regards to the romance between Ollie and Will, but I still really enjoyed this and I could NOT put it down. Not only was it super fun and romance-y, but it also had some depth and really took a good look at grief and I liked it a lot. I cannot wait to read what Sophie Gonzalez puts out next!
TW: terminal illness, death of a loved one, homophobia
Rating: really liked it
this is a cute and lighthearted read, but not something that really stands out.
its your typical YA realistic fiction about teenagers and crushes and school and family. i think the story does a decent job at representing the LGBT community, normalising being plus-sized, combating harmful stereotypes, expressing grief and the loss of a loved one, and showing the joys of liking someone.
and even though it delivers all of that, i cant help wanting more. its a very short, simple story. good enough to pass the time enjoyably, but not enough to really make me feel anything deep. its very surface level, if that makes sense, and not really anything i havent read before.
easy to recommend to those looking for a little cuteness, but it didnt quite
‘wow’ me personally.
thanks wednesday books for an ARC!↠ 3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS BOOK! 😍❤️💖I requested this book from Netgalley for one reason - it is branded as an LGBT version of Grease! Instantly I thought, 'How can that not be great?!'. I was lucky enough to get this on a wish and oh boy was I right! It was so great, so sweet, so nostalgic but still so fresh. I am all out fangirl-ing for this one!! I only have one thing to say - get your hands on this book as soon as you can!! 😍😍
"All I'd needed was a Destiny's Child song playing as an overture and it would've been the greatest "screw you" since Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind."
- Ollie
❤️ THE THINGS I LOVED ❤️Grease: One of my all time favourite movies is Grease, it always takes me back and makes me happy. I absolutely love how this book drew on the overall concept of Grease and how it was, in many ways, delightfully recognisable. You could identify the different characters in this book with the movie cast and certain scenes are reminiscent of the original. But it was still a story all on its own and that was amazing!
LGBT: There are too few LGBT books out there that truly represent what it's like to be LGBT (I am bi, myself). But I absolutely loved the different representations in this book, the closeted, the openly out and the confused. It felt like a very real representation and it really hit home for me over and over again ❤️
Ollie!: OMG if it wasn't because he was gay I would totally fall in love with Ollie! He was so amazingly sweet, adorable and awkward, he had my heart from the first moment! I was rooting for him right from the start!
"Note to self: carry bass around everywhere and break into impromptu solo whenever anyone tries to force you into conversation."
- Ollie
LOL: I am usually not the person who says - or writes - LOL but this book just embodies it so well! There were so many passages that honestly had me laughing out loud, it was so amazing. I mean, I can get a good chuckle going usually, but actually laughing is rare for me.
ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review Follow me for more book goodness: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Rating: really liked it
premise? 10/10. execution.... i'm going to be generous and not give it an "out of ten" rating lol.
i am not a teen but i like to think that i can still appreciate some YA stories. this one just missed the mark for me. the romance was so so lackluster and it was the cornerstone of this story. so so much tell and hardly anything was shown.
i will look at the bright side though in that this was a non-traumatic coming out story.
thanks to Wednesday Books for sending me a copy!
Rating: really liked it
"It'll get easier. That's the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can't handle. We grow from these things."
there are many reasons this could have earned a lower rating from me - not my kind of writing style, kind of a slow start. But ultimately I bumped it to a four because I loved the representation of this book and the examination of the two characters behaviour and how equally this novel showed the strengths and flaws of both the main character and love interest. full review to come on Monday on my blog
Rating: really liked it
3.5
A hugely enjoyable YA romance which also tackles a serious subject-very well.This is only slightly touched on in the blurb so I'm not going to elaborate too much.
The theme of the book isn't a new one.High school setting with an out character and one firmly in the closest.But this is truly engaging.Told only from Ollie's pov and I think I fell for him instantly.
Ollie and Will have a summer fling.It's intense and passionate but once the summer is over Ollie is baffled by Will's silence.To make things worse Ollie and his family must move temporarily and Ollie starts a new school.Will's school and if Ollie was confused about Will's silence after their fling he's even more bewildered by Will's indifference to him at school.
Ollie is befriended by three girls who kind of take him under their wing.These characters definitely added depth to the story.They're not the stereotypical high school girls.They're individual with issues of their own that I'm sure any young person reading this will identify with.
I read The Law of Inertia by this Author and loved it so I knew I liked her writing.She manages to tackle a serious subject here,which doesn't overwhelm the story,along side the romance between Will and Ollie.
There are no on page sex scenes between the MCs at all.And I honestly didn't miss them.The story didn't need them.Strangely,I think I enjoyed the story more without them.
The story is very well crafted.It's sweet with a bit of angst,funny,with a serious side.Two highly likeable MCs,and great supporting characters.
A YA story that will appeal to a lot of people.Maybe too much of a 'young' feel for me but still very engaging.
Review copy provided by the publisher,via NetGalley.
Rating: really liked it
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets Clueless, inspired by Grease. With all of the many, many dramatics of the straight friends in the book, I definitely got a "
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" vibe from the story, no doubt.
But "
Clueless" was extremely funny, which this book had its moments, but I didn't personally feel that humor played much of a role here. At least not constantly, like in "
Clueless".
And "
Grease"? Ummm, I didn't really feel that many Grease-like moments, but I'm not completely obsessed with that movie in the same adoring way that my hubby is. The boy has a problem, I'm telling you. heh
As the story began, it was Ollie's first day at a new school in North Carolina, then over the course of the story, we got flashbacks of a summer fling that he'd had with a local, closeted basketball player, Will, which seemed to end fine, only to be followed by a bout of extreme ghosting.
Will had expected the end of summer to also signal the end of their short relationship, but when Ollie enrolled at his new school, Will freaked out pretty badly, exactly as I'd figured he would. Talk about your chickens coming home to roost.
I liked both Will and Ollie, understanding all too well the predicament that they were in, but just like with "
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda", I had the same feeling that their friends' problems at least partially overshadowed the *main* story in this M/M YA romance.
The one side plot that I was happy to include pages for was Ollie's aunt's cancer, and how Ollie stepped up to help with her kids. Every single page of that sub-plot felt genuine and packed with tons of emotion.
However, I could've honestly done without a few of the other side-plots with Ollie's new gal pals. Those parts felt long and drawn-out, making me want to skip pages until we got back to the romance.
The story had no steam, but finished with a very strong HFN, with the boys thankfully going (view spoiler)
[ to colleges very close to one another (hide spoiler)], something that a lot of YA stories fail to end with, which never fails to piss me off.
Overall, the book made me smile and left me in a hopeful, upbeat mood, the main reason that I read YA to begin with, so I'd rate this one at around 3.5 stars and recommend it to YA readers looking for a manageable level of angst.
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My ARC copy of the book was provided by the publisher in exchange for a fair, unbiased review.See All My Latest Reads (Review Quick-Links)
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Rating: really liked it
rep: gay mc, bi Venezuelan li, bi sc, plus-sized poc sc, poc scs
tw: cancer, off-page death, homophobia, biphobia, fatphobia
ARC provided by the publisher.This is a very fun book, largely due to Ollie (the protagonist) who’s simply, in the very wise words of Will,
ridiculous. I want to make some things clear, though, before we proceed: this is also a messy book. It’s messy in a way that none of the characters are perfect, and they keep making mistakes, and no one is really 100% in the right. It’s messy in a way that life (especially life of a teenager) is messy and totally not black-and-white. I just know not everyone enjoys stories like that.
It’s definitely a kind of story I personally love & it’s that messiness that appealed to me the most.
Only Mostly Devastated is very much characters-focused and with Ollie as the narrator, for the most part it shows everything through his eyes, making
him seem like the person who has the moral high ground. He’s not exactly an unreliable narrator, not in the sense we’re used to - it’s more accurate to say that he’s an eighteen years old boy. Sometimes what he assumes people did and what their intentions were completely misses the point those people tried to make. And
Only Mostly Devastated addresses that!
Obviously, it’s mostly visible in regard to Will (his love interest). See, the boys were a summer fling and then it turned out they go to the same school this year. And that fact didn’t make things easier for them, exactly. What it boils down to is that Ollie is out and Will isn’t, and Ollie tries to deal with that but not always in the best ways.
Now, the messy part mentioned before turns everything interesting. Because sure, on one hand it’s not great for Ollie to date someone who’s in closet when he’s been out for years and doesn’t want to stop being open about that part of himself. On the other, Will grew up in a totally different environment, with a totally different family & group of friends, and as we all know, coming out just isn’t easy. Him being scared is totally understandable, just like Ollie being impatient and hurt is totally understandable.
Will’s actions, as he tried to preserve his sense of status quo, weren’t always amazing. In fact, there were times where he downright acted like a dick. (Especially one scene pops to mind, where he treated a girl more like a means to the end than a human being; it’s possible to excuse it somewhat with fear but still.) But there are two sides to every story and from Will’s perspective he was simply doing his best to protect himself. There comes a point when the books makes that abundantly clear to everyone (to Ollie) and the fact that we got to have that discussion was really great and necessary. And honestly, as much as I adore Ollie, he was a dick just as often as Will was.
No one is only ever right or wrong. No easy answers here.
Gonzales shows that particular sentiment in more ways than just with Ollie and Will. There’s the way different people react to horrible things happening to the ones they love. While Ollie himself might not agree with coping mechanisms of others, it’s still made clear enough that none of them are invalid. And that really, all we can do with tragedies thrown our way is try to live through them.
I summed this book up as “funny, warm & heartbreaking” and I still think that description pretty much nails it. It’s definitely a kind of novel I want to read when I’m feeling a little bit down, when I want to laugh (honestly, Ollie is hilarious!), when I want to remember that no one is perfect. And when I want to cry just a little bit. No one is perfect but
Only Mostly Devastated offers a pretty perfect mix of emotions.
(PS Prior to reading & reviewing I didn’t understand why this book was being compared to
Grease, because I have never seen that movie in my life, I only knew that one song, you know the one. So it’s safe to say the book holds up on its own. I watched it now, though, and yeah,
Only Mostly Devastated is a great retelling that keeps the important components of the original story but makes it modern, diverse and not ridiculous.)
Rating: really liked it
Many thanks to Wednesday Books for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review "It'll get easier. That's the beautiful thing about the universe. It puts you through trials, but it never gives you anything you can't handle. We grow from these things."
I know that everyone is comparing this to
Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda and
Grease but I would honestly say this was like a less graphic version of the Netflix show,
Sex Education which, by the way, is a great show. Go watch it.
So, what's this book about? Only Mostly Devistated follows Ollie, a possibly-jilted highschool senior. Ollie is still trying to figure out his feelings for Will, his summer fling when he moves to North Carolina when his Aunt Linda's health takes a turn for the worse. Ollie's still hoping he'll figure out what's going on with Will.
At a party after the first day at his new high school, Ollie is shocked yet happy to see none other than Will. Will, on the other hand, isn't so happy. Alone, Will is sweet and cute but surrounded by his basketball friends, he wants nothing to do with Ollie.
And Ollie soon doesn't want to be with Will either. Will is closeted, bro-y and honestly kind of a jerk. Unfortunately, he seems to flip from loving to cold every other day and Ollie can't tell what his true feelings are. Now, he must decide what he feels and how to deal with it.
The first thing I want to note is that this book is short. Not bad short. Good short. Its only 272 pages (at least my ARC is) and moves very fast which I found quite enjoyable as it held my attention.
I also LOVED the highschool setting. I'm not yet a senior in high school but the first 50 pages of Ollie and his first day at school made me feel so nostalgic for my first day of high school (which, as of writing was only six months ago although it feels like an eternity).
Sophie Gonzales also does a good job of building characters. I must admit that they are a bit cliche but that actually added to the overall sweetness and charm of the novel.
Another great aspect was Ollie's family. Specifically Aunt Linda. Though there were some distant relatives and a grandfather who I never knew who passed away from cancer, I've been fortunate enough to not be affected by it. This book painted an emotional and real picture of dealing with cancer and loved ones who have it.
Finally, I loved the theme of the book which is that everyone processes events and emotions at their own pace in their way. That's something that everyone should keep in mind.
Bottom Line:
4 stars
Age Rating - [ PG-13 ]
Content Screening (Mild Spoilers) -
Educational Value (3/5) - [Cancer, Sexuality]
Positive Messages (4/5) - [Dealing with grief, Optimism, Self-love, Moving at your own pace]
Violence (0/0)
Sex (1/5) - [Kissing, Sex themes, Illuding to sex, Discussion of sex]
Language (3/5) - [Sh*t, D*mn, F*ck]
Drinking/Drugs (4/5) - [Underage drinking, Medicinal drugs, Chemo]
Trigger and Content Warnings - Loss of a loved one, Homophobia, Sexism, Body shaming
Publication Date:
Publisher - Wednesday Books (an imprint of St. Martins Press (an imprint of Macmillan))
Genre: LGBT/Romance
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I felt like the ending was a bit abrupt but, overall, I enjoyed this highschool drama-y novel! Review to come
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Thank you Wednesday Books!!!!!!
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you guys i'm getting an ARC... i cannot contain my glee!!!!!!!!!!!
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i can already tell that this is going to be a smash hit
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Rating: really liked it
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“It was late afternoon, on the very last Wednesday of August, when I realized Disney had been lying to me for quite some time about Happily Ever Afters.”
Only Mostly Devastated tells
a cute but extremely formulaic story that is as memorable as a teen coming-of-age movie (possibly of the Netflix variety). I really wanted to enjoy this
but I found the story to be
unimaginative, the plot to be
uneventful and—with the exception of Ollie and Will—every single character struck me as being little more than
a stand-in for a certain issue.
Positives✓ Sophie Gonzales'
simple writing style effectively conveys Ollie's various thoughts and experiences. Rather than loosing herself in a purply metaphors Gonzales has opted for
a more direct and plain prose and this first-person narrative is perhaps the most accomplished aspect of
Only Mostly Devastated.
Ollie hooks readers in, right from his opening lines, and keeps us entertained and engaged throughout the majority of the novel.
“Thankfully, Mom and Dad raised me to aim low, to encourage a healthy contentment in hitting par.”
Ollie's is
an amusing narrator. He is fairly awkward, very sweet, and has a lovely sense of humour. He shows
self-awareness and self-respect (two things that are often
MIA in a YA main character). While he does use acronyms (I had to google
D and M) and makes plenty of references to popular culture, these were well incorporated into the narrative (they didn't come across as just random insertions). If anything they made him into a believable teenager.
“A week later, and I was still getting lost more often than the girl in the Labyrinth movie, except I didn't even have David Bowie in tights as a reward for my efforts.”
✓ The
Grease-inspired story had potential. This ‘Will isn't the same after the summer’ scenario created a good amount of tension and angst. Ollie is confused and hurt by Will's change of character (from a sweet and sensitive boy into an obnoxious class clown who doesn't even want to be seen with Ollie).
✓
The relationship between Ollie and Will was well developed. While Ollie doesn't excuse Will's behaviour (
“I'm a dick because I've always been a dick around my friends wasn't really an excuse.”) he doesn't pressure him to make their summer romance public knowledge. Ollie, quite rightfully, finds it intolerable to be someone's ‘dirty secret’, yet he also understands the difficult position Will is in (
“No one deserves to be outed against their will.”). In spite of their disagreements and different attitudes, readers can see just how much they care for each other. They share
many tender moments and I thought that their
ups-and-downs were very realistic.
Negatives✗ The storyline starts well enough but soon fell into
a predictable path. We have a certain number of subplots following Ollie's friends and his aunt which were so
thinly rendered as to have little impact on the overall story.
✗
Ollie's friends and his aunt seemed to exist only so that the novel could
address certain hot topics. Sadly these characters were
reduced to the issues they were contending with. Take Ollie's new friends: they just happen to be the three people he gets to know on the first day. One is there so the novel can include
a hurried, and extremely superficial, discussion on body positivity. She has few lines and they mostly have to do with her appearance/body/diets+exercise regime...her personality was mostly non-existent. She was defined by this subject matter. Another one of his new friends (the girl who decides to nickname our protagonist Ollie-oop on the very first day...
who does that?! Someone from
Riverdale?) exists so the story can include an 'its okay to fail/keep trying' message. And then we have the girl who had the potential to have a more defined personality (not a good one but still) ended up being portrayed as
a rather clichéd bully-with-a-heart. These three girls were poorly developed and rather unbelievable. Ollie's aunt (and her illness) seem to have been included only as
an inciting plot-device...which isn't great as it is a cheap way to try to make your readers feel sorry or sympathise with Ollie (he didn't need this extra dose of sad).
✗
Ollie's parents are so unimportant and 'unwritten' as to be closer to two nebulous entities than to two human individuals. In her first appearance Ollie's mother tells him that they will be moving to a new state and he can't complain because she has a lot on her plate. Which...
yeah. After that she has a few lines about 'energy' and such. Ollie's father makes his first appearance around the 40% mark and tells him off because he is stressed. After that I'm not sure he does or says anything of notice.
They were like the adults in Tom and Jerry..cut off from Ollie's story, barely in the picture. ✗ Ollie's 'old' friends disappear after one video call...clearly they had a very meaningful relationship with Ollie.
✗ Will's two 'dude friends' were as
poorly developed as the rest...
✗ That ending was way too cheesy (even by rom-com standards).
Final verdictTeens who haven't read a lot of YA might find more enjoyable than I did...but readers who aren't keen on plots that rehash tired elements from high-school dramas might be better off skipping this one.
Read more reviews on my blog / / / View all my reviews on Goodreads
Rating: really liked it
This book is all kinds of adorable!!
"It was late afternoon, on the very last Wednesday of August, when I realized Disney had been lying to me for quite some time about Happily Ever Afters. Because, you see, I was four days into mine, and my prince was nowhere to be found. Gone. Vanished."
Ollie and his parents moved to North Carolina from California for the summer when his aunt becomes ill. He spends most of his summer at the beach, taking care of his young cousins. There he meets Will—handsome, kind, athletic, and fun—and it's not too long before the two have completely fallen for one another. But after Will leaves the beach to head home, Ollie never hears from him again—no calls, texts, nothing.
As if that's not enough for Ollie to deal with, his family has decided to stay in North Carolina to help care for his aunt for a year. Now he has to do his senior year in a completely new school, which seems like the worst possible scenario. Then he discovers that it's the same school Will attends, which is fantastic...until he discovers that no one knows Will is gay, and worse than that, this version of Will—the cocky, clownish, closeted bro—isn't someone that Ollie likes at all.
Ollie makes friends with a circle of girls, each with their own challenges to deal with. Will is torn between wanting to spend time with Ollie and overcompensating whenever one of his friends from the basketball team comes by and could possibly suspect the truth about Will. It gets to the point where Ollie is tired of being treated like dirt by Will, tired of being jerked around so Will can maintain his reputation.
Meanwhile, as things with Ollie's family get tougher and tougher to deal with, Will's on-again, off-again feelings become a challenge for Ollie, too. He understands what it's like not to be ready to share your sexuality with others, but Ollie doesn't deserve to be an afterthought. But how many times can he be the butt of a joke from Will's friends or, worse, Will himself? How can he stand by and watch as Will pretends to be someone he's not at Ollie's expense?
Only Mostly Devastated is a really sweet and funny book, with an added layer of poignancy. I like the complexities that Sophie Gonzales gave her characters, so this was a little bit more than just a high school rom-com. Once again, when I read this book I found myself wishing something like this existed when I was younger and wondered whether there was anyone else out there who felt the way I did, and once again I'm grateful we live in a world where books like these are plentiful.
I've got to question the marketing of this one, though: it's being billed as
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets
Clueless in this boy-meets-boy spin on
Grease . The only similarity I see between any of those and the book is when Will's new friends realize that the boy he's been talking about is someone from their own school—a slight parallel to that scenario in the movie
Grease .
As with many rom-coms, there's nothing earth-shattering about
Only Mostly Devastated , but Gonzales' writing is so engaging, and its story is one you want to root for. Can you ask for much more than that?
NetGalley and Wednesday Books gave me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
Only Mostly Devastated publishes March 3.
Check out my list of the best books I read in 2019 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2019.html.
Check out my list of the best books of the decade at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-favorite-books-of-decade.html.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.
Rating: really liked it
I'll admit that this didn't end up being the most amazing wonderful adorable hilarious queer YA rom-com I expected it to be back when it was first announced. But I think, based on how insane my expectations were, this was still a pretty good read; even if, despite the ages of the characters and some of the subject matter, it did read a little on the younger of the YA side.
If you're picking this one up hoping to see some
Grease references, you'll be pretty happy, I think. They weren't overdone, it didn't stick to the script half as closely as I expected, and it ended up being very much it's own thing — with it's own emotional backbone to set it apart — but you don't need to go hunting too hard to see some parallels. Though I'm still waiting to understand the
Clueless connection, so, fair warning for that comparison.
That said, it was also kind of hard to read at times, too. I definitely didn't expect the conflicts between the leads to hurt as much as they did. For all we are told of the sweetness of Will, mostly through flashbacks, and in a few quiet one-on-one moments, he did and said some pretty unforgivable things to keep up his “straight” pretense; and while I appreciated some of the lightbulb moments on Ollie's side, some of which I agreed with and others I think just created so Will wasn't made out to be, like, a villain, it was still pretty unbalanced between them. Actions speak louder, sure, but words are still hurtful af.
That emotional backbone, I mentioned? Well, it was emotional. And while there were times I disliked both of Ollie's parents, I think in the context, some of it is forgivable. And in that same vein, it was nice to see a story like this were a teen is facing hardship and not resentful about it. Which, I mean, would be a completely valid thing but it was nice that this book didn't lean too hard into that potential for angst. There was plenty as it was.
So, yes, not quite the lighthearted-adorable-this-was-everything that I wanted, but this was diverse, and queer, and I know that plus the adorable cover is going to make this a hit for so many readers.
** I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. **
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This review can also be found at A Take From Two Cities.
Rating: really liked it
Ollie Di Fiore is happy and secure in his sexuality. As his favourite Aunt Linda points out he has a supportive family, great friends, and a wonderful school. He doesn't even know how easy his coming out was compared to other people's. Ollie and his family spend their summer at a lake in North Carolina, and this is where he meets and falls in love with Will- 'sweet, thoughtful, and respectful' Will. Then suddenly Will starts ignoring Ollie's texts and it's clear whatever undefined relationship they had is over.
Aunt Linda's health gets worse, and she can definitely do with her family support and Ollie's babysitting while she is doing her chemotherapy. Ollie's parents decide to move to North Carolina for a year and Ollie has to start a new school. Daunting as it is, it has its advantages. He can make new friends, or enemies, he can be anything he wants to be- self-assured, confident, relaxed. When he meets cool and super-friendly Juliette, Lara, and Niamh, Ollie quickly finds himself sharing confidences with them, including the photo of his summer fling, only to find out that they do know Will better than he could have imagined, because Will is the vice-captain of their school basketball team.
A happy coincidence? More likely a recipe for heartbreak when you take into consideration that Will isn't out and even worse likes to share a homophobic joke or two with his jock friends. And yes, he keeps ignoring Ollie, until one afternoon he drags Ollie into a closet to have a face-to-face talk to clear the things out.
I really liked Ollie. The situation he is in is actually very relatable, if you've ever been in love with somebody who needs to work their feelings out at their own pace (on positive side) or anybody who was somehow unavailable and wanted to keep your relationship 'secret'/'private' no matter what you wanted or how much it hurt you (the worst case scenario, but yes, I've been there and many other people also have). It is easy to get blinded by heartbreak, embarrassment, or anger, and sometimes it is healthier to walk away. Other times it is important to look carefully and objectively whether the other person is trying and whether your situations are compatible.
Ollie goes through extremely difficult time in this book and my heart was going to him. At the end of the day he is right we need to cherish people around us, because we might not have much time with them, which doesn't cancel our happy, loving experiences.
Entertaining, moving, and even heart-breaking at times, Only Mostly Devastated is a sweet story with intersting characters and relatable emotional dilemmas.
Thank you to Edelweiss and Wednesday Books for the ARC provided in exchange for an honest opinion.
Rating: really liked it
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
As soon as I heard “inspired by
Grease” – well . . . . . .
Much like the band TLC I will fully admit I ain’t too proud to beg either and did everything in my power to acquire an early copy of this one. And as soon as Ollie started his new school only to run into his summer lovin’ Will who totally pulled a Danny Zuko with his popular basketball buddies by saying he spent
his summer just . . . . .
You know this old lady was like . . . . .
Only Mostly Devastated was everything I wanted it to be. It totally had a
Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda vibe as the blurb promised (not so sure about the
Clueless namedrop – not really accurate and it wasn’t even necessary when the book is a guaranteed winner like this one), Will totally had
some legit reasons for being a bit of a turd, Ollie was a great/understanding friend, but not afraid to use his words and was unwilling to be a doormat just to make someone else’s life easier, there was just enough teenage drama, and
of course it all culminated ♪♫♪at the high school dance, where you can find romance, maybe it might be loooooooove♪♫♪.
I ate this sucker up . . . . .
Highly recommended.
Endless thanks to Wednesday Books for the early copy. You got me feeling all . . . .
Rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong
Shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom
Chang chang changitty chang sha-bop
Dip da-dip da-dip doo-wop da doo-bee doo
Boogedy boogedy boogedy boogedy
Shoo-be doo-wop she-bop
Sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na yippity dip de doom
Wop ba-ba lu-mop and wop bam boom! 
