Review: The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
Published: April 11th, 2017
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love. No matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls always have to be careful.

Then a cute new girl enters Cassie’s orbit, and for the first time ever, Molly’s cynical twin is a lovesick mess. Meanwhile, Molly's totally not dying of loneliness—except for the part where she is. Luckily, Cassie's new girlfriend comes with a cute hipster-boy sidekick. If Molly can win him over, she'll get her first kiss and she'll get her twin back.

There's only one problem: Molly's coworker, Reid. He's a chubby Tolkien superfan with a season pass to the Ren Faire, and there's absolutely no way Molly could fall for him.

Right?

Milka's Thoughts:

I loved Becky Albertalli's debut Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, so it came as a no surprise to me that I loved her follow-up The Upside of Unrequited too, but I must admit I would never have dared to believe I would love this novel THIS much.

After the brilliance of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Becky Albertalli had big shoes to fill with her second novel. Simon has become quite of a phenomenon with awards and movie in the making, so obviously there are a lot of expectations towards Albertalli's second novel. The Upside of Unrequited is a very different kind of book, but there are the same warmth and humor present as in Simon. All in all, The Upside of Unrequited managed to usurp my expectations and make me fall in love with Albertalli's writing and characters once again.

Molly has had a crush of a lot of different guys, but she has never acted on those crushes. She feels like she does not fit in and that maybe not everyone is not meant to fall in love. Maybe there are people who will never find a person who happens to be crushing on them too. When Molly's twin Cassie meets Mina and falls head over heels in love with her, Molly is once again made to question the dynamics of relationships. Molly is happy for Cassie, but at the same time, she cannot help to feel like she is missing on something.

This is one of those books I really wish I would have had in my life when I was a teenager. Though Molly and I are very different, we also share a lot of things. I am also a fat girl and I was always the one watching from the sidelines while my friends had relationships. But while I never really wanted a boyfriend, Molly wants one. And that is completely okay! When Cassie and Mina get it to their minds that Molly should hook up with Will, one of Mina's friends, Molly starts to get hopeful. Could the kind of flirty, ridiculously attractive hipster guy see something in her? And more importantly, could she see something in him. While Will seems like a viable option, Molly also starts to get more and more into spending time with Reid, her co-worker, who seems like totally not her type, but who also is someone Molly cannot stop thinking about.

Reid is pretty much perfection and I loved the moments between him and Molly. But while I am a huge fan of romantic storylines, what really made me fall in love with The Upside of Unrequited are the family dynamics the novel portrays. The relationship between Molly and Cassie is loving, but also complicated and not always exactly what they want it to be. I loved the scenes with Molly, Cassie and their mothers Patty and Nadine, and I now feel like Albertalli should totally right a book about how Patty and Nadine fell in love.

I am not Jewish and know very little about the Jewish culture, but I can only imagine how important a book like this is for the young (and older) Jewish girls out there who must see themselves very rarely portrayed in books like this.

Representation of fat bodies is always problematic and way too often hurtful. Luckily, Albertalli approaches the topic with grace and is able to create a character with thoughts that I, a fat girl myself, was able to relate with. The struggle Molly goes through with her body from time to time and the thoughts she has where something teenage-me definitely also had. I was happy to see that at the end of the day, Molly's body really has nothing to do with her capability to find happiness -- she does not have to change her body to be accepted, but rather just has to find a way to see that she is gorgeous and worthy of good things just as she is.

I really loved this book and I cannot wait to see what Albertalli comes up with next!

Five snowflakes

Review: Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Release Date: April 7, 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Review copy from Edelweiss

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.

With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

My thoughts:

Say hello to a new addition to my “favorite books ever” list and be prepared for a long, gushing rant about why I loved Becky Albertalli's brilliant debut Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda so incredibly much.

We are introduced to Simon who's a high school junior. He is fairly popular, has a tight group of friends and an awesome, slightly weird, reality-tv obsessed family. But there's a part of him that he has not told about to anyone, except to a mysterious boy called Blue that he found from the school Tumblr blog. Simon is gay, and though he knows that there's nothing embarrassing about it, he is not quite sure how to tell the whole world about it. So he starts to email Blue who's in a similar situation and they find a connection that Simon has never felt with anyone before. But then one of Simon's drama club buddies finds out about Simon's sexuality and takes screen captions of the emails Simon has been exchanging with Blue (what a douche, btw!) and Simon finds himself from a situation in which he does not quite know what to say or how to act. Simon is pulled into a whirlwind of emotions, revelations and feelings and the eventually it seems like the only constant in his life are the emails from Blue.

Simon is such a great protagonist. His life is generally okay and he has a place within his own little community of people, but at the same time, he does not quite feel like the people around him know him fully. He is sure of his sexuality, but at the same time, he is confused about how he should act around others and how things would change if he were to come out to his family and friends. It is so interesting to follow Simon around, to really get into his head and to see the world through his eyes. Simon is funny, extremely relatable and simply a pleasure to read about. Throughout the novel, he feels so real and honest, more like a friend than a fictional character and very quickly he became someone I felt very protective about and someone that I started to deeply care about. The way he can be honest about himself in the emails he exchanges with Blue just made my heart burst from happiness. They are so in sync without even knowing who they are writing to and the way they can trust each other is very admirable. The exchanges between them are like ones found from extremely good 90s romantic comedies, ones that slowly establish the relationship and really savour in the connection between the two people. Because really, the connection between Simon and Blue is MAGICAL.

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda is a love story between two incredible, honest individuals who fall in love under unusual circumstances (though I guess Internet love is getting more and more usual these days). The fact that they happen to be gay just makes this book so much more beautiful, in some sense, because of the all the stigma and prejudice that still surrounds these issues. I did not see their romance as more valuable or more special because they are gay – I saw it as valuable and special simply because they are so good to each other and so honest about the ways they feel. Yes, this could have been a novel about a boy and a girl and I probably would have enjoyed it too, but I don't know, just the way these two characters connect in an environment in which they are bullied and looked down to made me so incredibly happy.

Albertalli is such a good writer. I mean seriously, this story and the way she has build these characters and their surroundings just took my breath away. I know a lot of people who mainly read fantasy/dystopian say often that they are not attracted to contemporary YA because the fictional world is always the same, usually high school with a certain group of people are the focus. And yes, you can find that from Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, but the way that Albertalli writes about these people and this environment is done so well that I never felt like “hey, I have read this book before”. I loved the pacing of the novel and the switch between the chapters consisting of the email exchanges and the chapters focused on Simon's life outside the email exchanges. What was especially interesting was to see how these two worlds, Simon's life and the emails with Blue, start to emerge together as they start to know more about each other.

One of the best aspects of this book is the mystery of who Blue is. It is made clear in the beginning that Blue is someone who goes to same school with Simon, and it so much fun to put together all the little hints that point towards Blue's identity. Yes, I figured it out before it was revealed in novel, but that in no way made this less pleasurable read for me. Actually, I think it just made me love it even more, because I just couldn't wait to reach the point that the two actually meet each other.

There is also an interesting array of side characters in this book – Simon's family and friends, the drama club people, the people Simon meets as he tries to figure out his sexuality. I loved how the characters all contribute something to the story, but never take the focus away from Blue and Simon. As I was reaching the end of this novel, I felt grief just because I did not want it to end. Simon and Blue are one of those couples that will stay with me forever, and if Albertalli ever decides to write about them again, I will throw a party.

Though this is only Albertalli's debut, she has just become one of my favorite authors!

Five Snowflakes