Leah on the offbeat #BookReview

Written by: Becky Albertalli

Published: April 30th, 2018

Format: Audiobook

Narrated by: Shannon Purser

Length: 7hrs and 6mins

Publisher: Penguin Books

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT, Romance

My Precise Rating: 3.7 stars! (Really liked it!)

SYNOPSIS

Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst. 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.

MY SPOILER FREE REVIEW

“Then her hand brushed close to mine, and my organs rearranged themselves.”

If you know me then you probably know the fact that I obsess over the concept of shared universes, like come on who doesn’t like to live a little longer with the characters they would die for!

Well ironic enough, I had mixed feelings about this book.

Leah is the least favorite character for me from the Simon vs. book, and I’m super excited to read this book as the narrative is told from her perspective, wanted to know more about her and thought I was in for another great ride, well this isn’t what I expected.

While this book has some amazing dialogue, great cast, and some fresh humor unlike I have ever seen but, it somehow made the characters flat, I had been waiting for that moment, for that character arc but it never happened, Leah stayed the same from start to end, overall it just felt like the narrative(compared to Simon vs.) had somehow lost its spark, lost the charm that made me want to read this book in the first place.

Did I tell you that I didn’t like Leah that much?

Garrett, ‘what a fucking slightly adorable doofus,’ he disserved better I just didn’t like how Leah treated him.

Simon, the reason I read this book is because of him, but again in this book, he seemed very different from Simon vs.

And that’s it. There’s nothing more to say.