Rating: 5 stars
“When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.”
I think it’s easy to say that I am absolutely in love with this book, and the “Simon Universe” as a whole. Even though I thought that Leah was overly trying to be a realtable character, it only made the read more enjoyable.
This book follows on from Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and this time, we follow Leah, Simon’s best friend, and I love how we got to see into her life after the role she played in Simon’s. I found that, even though I did enjoy Simon’s story, I found Leah’s much more interesting with better fleshed out relationships. I love how the central friend group don’t have any squabbles with other people, and that they can get on with pretty much anyone they come across.
I love that Becky Albertalli has written two well known books with a relationship that isn’t your typical heterosexual one, and I feel like some authors seem almost scared to include gay relationships in their work, but not Albertalli, she has pulled off both of them so well. As much as I did love Leah’s relationship with Abby, I quite enjoyed the idea of Leah and Garret together, and how Leah never noticed that he had this massive crush on her. I felt a bit sorry for him in a way because he asked her to prom and went all out, only to be rejected by her in the end. The one time I was actually rooting for the straight relationship and it never happened.
I felt like Abby was somewhat toying with Leah’s emotions when they were on the college trip, as she wasn’t aware that Leah was bisexual, but then again, Abby may have had the same feelings for Leah, and it was just never relvealed, and they both felt the same about each other at that time’ we’ll never know. They did end up together, and happy at that, in college, and I always love a happy ending.
Tea Stains and Book Spines 