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!

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.