Two Book Tuesday

Title: Only Mostly Devasted
Author: Sophie Gonzales
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publication Date: March 3rd, 2020
Ratings: ♥♥♥♥

Goodreads Summary:

SIMON VS. THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA meets CLUELESS in this boy-meets-boy spin on Grease

Summer love…gone so fast.

Ollie and Will were meant to be a summer fling—casual, fun, and done. But when Ollie’s aunt’s health takes a turn for the worse and his family decides to stay in North Carolina to take care of her, Ollie lets himself hope this fling can grow to something more. Dreams that are crushed when he sees Will at a school party and finds that the sweet and affectionate (and comfortably queer) guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High.

Will is more than a little shocked to see Ollie the evening of that first day of school. While his summer was spent being very much himself, back at school he’s simply known as one of the varsity basketball guys. Now Will is faced with the biggest challenge of his life: follow his heart and risk his friendships, or stay firmly in the closet and lose what he loves most.

Ummm….a Grease retelling!?!?! Talk about the ultimate dream! I’m actually pretty surprised that I had never seen this before. And not only its a Grease retelling, but a m/m retelling with a diverse cast of characters. There was also more depth inserted into the story by adding the familial struggles.

I am a massive Grease fan, I have been since a very young age. It was fun to follow along in the story and kind of loosely match scenes and characters to the musical. The relationships were really great and the character development felt very believable. I especially loved the relationship between Lara and Ollie.

The one thing that didn’t sit right with me was the the anger with Will because he won’t come out. This is something you can’t force. Just because Ollie is comfortable with being out doesn’t mean Will is, especially when situations arise that show how differently people think in North Carolina than San Jose. Yes, some of things Will did were insensitive to Ollie’s feelings but Ollie needed to be a little more understanding.

While this did bother me, I still really loved the book and think a lot of others will too. I didn’t want it to end!

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Twin
Author: Natasha Preston
Genre: YA Mystery Thriller
Publication Date: March 3rd, 2020
Ratings: ♥♥

Goodreads Summary:

In this twisty psychological thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Cellar, Ivy finds out that her twin sister, Iris, is trying to push her out of her own life—and might be responsible for their mother’s death.

After their parents divorced, 10-year-old twins Ivy and Iris were split up—Ivy lived with Dad, Iris with Mom. Now, after a tragic accident takes their mom’s life, the twins are reunited and Iris moves in with Ivy and their dad. Devastated over Mom’s death, Iris spends the first few weeks in almost total silence—the only person she will speak to is Ivy. Iris feels her life is over and she doesn’t know what to do. Ivy promises her twin that she can share her life now. After all, they’re sisters. Twins.

It’s a promise that Iris takes seriously. And before long, Ivy’s friends, her life at school, and her boyfriend, Tyler, fall under Iris’s spell. Slowly, Ivy realizes she’s being pushed out of her own life. But she’s just being paranoid, right? And Mom’s accident was . . . just an accident. Right? It’s not like she—or Dad—or Tyler—are in any danger. . .

The whole set up from the beginning was odd. The author went full Parent Trap—when the parents divorced, one twin went with the mom, the other with dad. Who does this? Iris and Ivy have almost no relationship, so much so that Ivy couldn’t even name Iris’s best friend. Once Iris moves in with Ivy and their dad after their mom dies, Iris starts to slowly take over her sister’s life. This was a great concept, but a mediocre delivery.

You could tell from the beginning that there was something off about Iris—passive regarding the death of her mother, conflicting emotions in general, and manipulative behavior with everyone in Ivy’s life. The problem was, I didn’t care3 for our narrator. I didn’t believe in Ivy’s friendships to begin with so when her twin turned them against her, I didn’t really care. The pacing was very slow; the true action didn’t take place until about 75% into the book. Somehow the entire book only spanned like, two months. Then the ending felt so rushed and out of nowhere that I left the reading experience unsatisfied and unsettled, but no in a good way.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.