Amazon.in:Customer reviews: Only Mostly Devastated

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 28 December 2020

it had a nice discussion on the fear of coming out, but instead of focusing on extreme homophobia, it focussed on the casual microaggressive homophobia that everyone around us spews - I appreciated that a lot.

it had great writing, a solid story, and cute moments - yet I didn't get that *oomph* factor for a 5-star book. I'm very confused about it myself.

have I outgrown YA? or am I just not giving with contemporary anymore? or am I just sleep-deprived? or do I just have a high bar of comparing cute books to Simon? or is it a combination of all? IDK.

i recommend picking it up and deciding for yourself.

Find me talking about books on my insta @ZanyAnomaly

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Couldn't be more cute

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 15 March 2020

First of all it has been aptly said that those who loved Simon vs the homosapien's agenda will love this one also but I found it even better than the former.....One of the finest LGBT books I've ever read. It was just something super cute to read in spring. The story had good character building, nice plot and the best part a very happy and thoughtful ending. The length is short and the language is also simpler so one could simply read it in one go but not even at a single point would it disappoint.

The best things to check out in this book are 1. The friendship between the girls and Ollie especially that of Ollie and Lara,
2. The gradually development of understanding between Will and Ollie
3. The bond between the basketball guys
4. Togetherness of Ollie's family and their care towards Linda
5. Last but not the least the cute babies Crista and Dylan

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Goblin & Reaper

The story is fascinating, each scene was simple to understand and emotionally connect with...

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 1 July 2021

Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn't worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters wasn't a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.

While on vacation with his family in North Carolina, Ollie has a fantastic summer romance, but when it's time to return home, his parents decide to move out to take care of Ollie's mother's cancer-stricken sister. So, for his senior year, Ollie moves to a new town and, unknowing to him, begins attending the same school as his summer boyfriend... a guy who isn't out. And who now starts to ignore Ollie but can't seem to keep away from him either.
The story is written from Ollie's point of view, which was amazing since I adored him as a character - he was hilarious, kind, and I liked being inside his brain. The language was simple yet amusing, and I like the juxtaposition of text messages and summer nostalgia. I enjoyed the flashbacks since they gave us a glimpse of their connection before the start of the school year, and the electricity between them was palpable, making me cheer for them wholeheartedly. To summarise, Ollie and Will meet over the summer and have a Lil summer romance before ending up at the same school, however, Will isn't out yet, so he avoids Ollie at first until all the amazing stuff in the novel begins occurring and you can't put it down.
Because the book was marketed as a rom-com, I was startled to find that it addresses a wide range of serious subjects, including cancer, fatphobia, and homophobia. However, Gonzales handled each issue with depth and compassion, particularly in terminal sickness and bereavement passages. This novel, in my opinion, perfectly represents the authentic teen experience: falling in love for the first time, dealing with a family member's loss, fighting with weight and learning to appreciate your body, and discovering your sexuality. We need more novels like this that highlight how chaotic, stressful, and confused a teen's life can be.
One of the most important topics in this novel is the love interest Will still being deep in the closest. As he comes from a Venezuelan family, Will believes his family will disown him if he comes out and that his friends will abandon him. As such, he makes poor judgments in an attempt to prove he is not gay, and as a result, he treats Ollie badly. On the other hand, Ollie still has feelings for Will and is unsure how to let him go. Will will strike a chord with a large number of people.
This book's characters were fantastic! Niamh, Lara, and Juliette made up the roses (also known as the pink ladies). I like how their friendship group evolved after they adopted (hihihi) Ollie on the first day of school. Lara was definitely a bitch at first, but she eventually developed to be my favorite of the gals. Despite her caustic remarks, she always looked out for her pals, sometimes surreptitiously, and spoke up for them. Also, the character growth in this was fantastic since they didn't let her get away with being a complete jerk at times - Niamh was right there to call her out on her nonsense, which was incredible!
But, returning to the portion where I mentioned sadness, I did weep a lot. Gonzales wrote about sadness in a way that made me experience it as well. She made me weep for a character I had just met, and she made me feel for the character who was going through it, especially when she talked about all the things the dead character would miss out on, and how life would go on as if they had never lived. In what was supposed to be a pleasant tale, I never expected to question my own life, but you know what? It didn't bother me, especially since everything worked out in the end. The way the storyline was finished made my heart melt, and I adored the overall interaction between the Roses and the Basketball lads and how they stood up for one other.
This novel had a lot of characters, yet they all felt like genuine individuals to me. They were so well-developed that nothing felt forced, as if Gonzales was attempting to make them relatable. Ollie has an interesting friendship group that develops really well as we get more.
The story is fascinating, each scene was simple to understand and emotionally connect with; I found myself crying more than once and laughing out loud more times than I could count.
This was such a sweet book with so many adorable situations, especially the part with Lara and Ollie at prom with the necklace (made me fall for her) and her explaining its significance!!! My heart was full of adoration.

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For The Love of Fictional Worlds

Cute, Adorable and Relevant Coming of Age (Out of the Closet) YA Romance <3

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 5 July 2020

Only Mostly Devastated is a coming of age as well as coming out – the fear, the anxiety and the absolute belief that your life, and your family & friends would change as a consequence.

Ollie is out and just had the most wonderful summer romance with Will – something he absolutely is giddy about, even though he thinks that it wouldn’t go beyond the summer, because a.) Will isn’t out and b.) They don’t exactly live in the same town.

But while Will and Ollie had been texting quite frequently during the summer, now Will seems to have ghosted him so suddenly and without notice. While he is grappling with this heartbreak, his parents inform him that they are moving to Napier, to be close to his Aunt, who is suffering from cancer; to help his Uncle and their family during his Aunt’s treatment.

The fact that he has to leave his life and friends behind was traumatic enough, he also runs into Will at his first party at his new school – Will, who seems so freaking different from the Will he had fallen for during the summer.
With him finding a tribe of friends from the first, with a few hiccups; Ollie seems to be handling things the way any hormone, angst ridden teenager would, sometimes with a whole lot of drama. There is a push and pull relationship between Ollie and Will; who seems to be happy keeping his sexuality and their “relationship” a secret for the fear of how his own Jock friends (who at times tend to make homophobic jokes & comments) and his parents would respond.

Told in Ollie’s PoV, Only Mostly Devastated is a book that will resonate with all its readers; even though there are some predictable (&at times cringy) YA themes – there is a growth that can be seen in Ollie’s character – from being obsessively in love with Will and taking any type of attention he would give him to a boy who understands his own self worth was a treat to read about.

The secondary characters, Ollie and Will’s friends do not for a second detract from the plotline, in fact they actually add a certain amount panache to it – and it was another treat to actually seem them grow into themselves and the persons they want to be.
Light, breezy and definitely addictive, Only Mostly Devastated is a coming of age young adult novel that will end up giving you all the feels!

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Shatarupa Dhar

an emotional YA LGBTQ romance

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 5 March 2020

Synopsis:
Oliver (Ollie) Di Fiore moves to Collinswood, North Carolina from California with his parents in order to be close to his Aunt Linda. She has cancer. She lives with her husband and needs all the help that she can get with her two young kids. This move, even if not particularly to his liking, raises Ollie's hopes of seeing Will Tavares again. The same Will who had spent the summer with him, shared intimacies, and then abruptly checked out with no replies to even his texts. Ollie knew he attended school in North Carolina. He does get to see Will again, in his new school at Collinswood High, where the latter's a member of the basketball team. Will is also the cool guy who cracks anti-LGBT jokes with his teammates, and the guy who tries to get back with Ollie but in secrecy. Because he hasn't come out yet and is scared of his conservative parents finding out about his sexual orientation.

Review:
Only Mostly Devastated is a story about coming out, the fear and anxiety surrounding it, and the stigma attached to it. It is also about family, moving on in life, and healing. While it is not my first LGBT read, it is the first one about coming out and I'm happy it was this story. It is one of my best reads of this year.

"It was late afternoon, on the very last Wednesday of August, when I realized Disney had been lying to me for quite some time about Happily Ever Afters."

The story starts with Ollie's narration in the first person with a lot of text messages to Will in between. While he's not too upbeat about having to leave his seventeen-year-old hip life in California behind, he's also glad to be able to help take care of Dylan and Crista, his cousin siblings. The story was off to a peculiar start. The text messages, the drawn-out words, the overtly kiddish repetitive talks – it seemed to me to be a bunch of high school students with slangs. But oh, they're a bunch of high school students!?! I guess I haven't read anything remotely near to contemporary YA in some time and it took me about one-fourth of the book to go by before it started to grow on me.

"A part of me suddenly understood why people drank at parties. It wasn’t to have fun. It was to forget how much of an idiot they made of themselves."

Will lives in Napier with his parents who had grounded him. And that's the reason he couldn't reply to Ollie's messages as he was off social media for two whole weeks. Will seems happy to see Ollie but he maintains his distance, sometimes to the point of behaving as if nothing ever happened between them. His on-again-off-again attitude was getting to Ollie.

At the beginning of every few chapters, Ollie reminisces the summer he spent with Will. And they're some really beautifully written memories. It is an engaging story that will make you cry, not buckets maybe but still. Another thing that I'll like to mention is the gender representation that is there in this book. I'm blown by how the author has melded so many aspects in a single story without overwhelming the narrative.

"So that’s how you get through a social situation without repelling everyone within ten feet of you. Speak as little as possible, and fill the silence in with music."

The ending was a wonderful surprise. I mean, it was perhaps predictable, but still a surprise. At least for me, it was. I loved this story! I wonder what it would have been had it been from Will's perspective. But I guess it was better to hear it from Ollie. The tussle between coming out, acceptance-rejection, confused teenage feelings about love, etc was lent a powerful voice through Ollie's first-person perspective.

The cover depicts the main characters of the book (from bottom right, going clockwise) – Ollie, Will, Juliette, Matt, Darnell, Niamh, Lara. I hope I got it right.

Thank you to Wednesday Books (an imprint of St. Martin's Press - Macmillan Publishers) and NetGalley for an e-ARC of the book.

Originally posted on:
My Blog @ Shaina's Musings

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Chaitanya Srivastava

Partly Cute and adorable, partly disappointing!

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 25 August 2021

I picked up #OnlyMostlyDevastated because I felt that it would be my next comfort read. Unfortunately, it fell short of my expectations!

Two boys, Ollie and Will, meet and are attracted to each other on a summer vacation. But, when the holidays end, so does the relationship. Ollie is not happy about it until he finds out that Will is also a student at his new school. And we just go from there!

I enjoyed how over the top and dramatic yet absolutely sweetheart and insecure Will was. The voice was so PERFECT and it showed so much in his thoughts, feelings and behaviour! I would also like to highlight the sub-plot involving Will's family and his younger cousins that he takes care of was really interesting.

Now coming to the “meh stuff”! I didn’t enjoy the side characters - especially Ollie's friends. The conversations were boring and redundant. However, my biggest issue with this book is the love interest - Will. Yes, you read that right. I understand how everyone takes their own time to come out and we can't force people when they are not ready and all that, but honestly, it can't be an excuse as to why he behaved the way he did with Ollie. So many times Ollie mentions how it made him feel and yet each time he rationalises his hurt because Will was able to justify why he did what he did. And honestly, it's some annoying shit. He does kind of redeem himself but I am not convinced completely.

It started out so well, but it kind of couldn’t keep that up for long. I wish I could say that I LOVED this book, but I didn’t. Ollie’s really cute and while he may have found his “happily ever after” with Will, I feel he deserves a lot better.

WHY TO PICK THIS?
👨‍❤️‍👨M/M Romance
🏫Soapy Highschool drama
🎸Music
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Family is important
😌Cute, funny & adorable

TW: Cancer, Death of a loved one, grief, trauma, homophobia among others.

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Alex HG

Adorée !

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on 2 September 2022

Verified Purchase

4,25/5 💙

J'ai adoré ! Ollie est super attachant, ça se lit vite, c'est drôle et touchant ✨ J'ai vraiment apprécié l'évolution de Lara, les amitiés présentes et les personnages secondaires 🙌

Ce roman aurait pu être un coup de cœur si la relation était un peu plus développée et qu'on en apprenait plus sur Will ! J'ai eu l'impression de pas vraiment le connaître, il était assez "abstrait" et c'est dommage 😕

Mais ça reste une super lecture 👀

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Loulou

Very sweet, relatable and funny

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 15 December 2022

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The second book I've read by this author and it's very sweet, relatable and laugh-out-loud funny. Though it also makes me very glad my teenage years are behind me.) It deals with deeper themes such as death, the difficulty of talking to parents, and also deals sensitively with the topic of coming out as being a process for each individual.

Ulysses Grant Dietz

Richly textured, 3-D characters, and a gentle, generous sense of humor.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on 2 August 2020

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This excellent YA novel is one of those that really seems to dig into the psyche of the modern teenagers. It makes me wonder, as all good YA novels do, whether I’d even survive being a teenager now. It was tough enough back in the 1970s.

Gonzalez puts all the tropes in place: attractive and smart boy, non-athletic, with a gaggle of female friends; the star jock surrounded by other jocks. The two things that the author does that really set this book apart are the diversity of the cast and the context of the romance between the nerd and the jock.

The context is a summer fling at a lake in North Carolina, where Oliver Di Fiore and Will Tavares find romance that seems real for both of them. Then Will disappears back into his world and Oliver prepares to head back to San Jose, California, with his parents.

Then Will seems to ghost Oliver, and Oliver’s parents drop the bomb on him that they’ve decided to return to California only to pack up and move back to Collinswood, North Carolina, for the next year or so. This is the other part of the context: Oliver’s aunt Linda has cancer, and his mother wants to be there for her family.

We know what’s going to happen, at least in part, because that’s how these things go. Oliver, very cleverly written by the author, is an over-thinker, and sometimes gets in his own way. He is not whiny, nor entitled—indeed he’s a fantastic babysitter for his little cousins and steps up to help his family. He’s a musician, and cooler than your average out boy in a YA book. His almost-instant circle of friends—Juliette, Lara and Niamh (Gaelic, Neev, and I’m grateful the author took care of the pronunciation) are just what you want from a group of BFFs. Only Lara is white. This story quickly takes on the feeling of the marvelous Brit TV series “Sex Education,” where a semi-rural high school in Wales is completely diverse ethnically.

The other shoe drops when, on the first evening after the first day of school, Oliver is taken to a big party and finds himself face to face with Will—in a basketball letter jacket, surrounded by his jock friends, including Darnell and Matt, who become the counterpoint to Oliver’s female trio. Will, of course, all but pretends he doesn’t know who Oliver is, and there you go.

What the story becomes is a study in social dynamics with periodic additions of wisdom from—wait for it—the adults. Oliver’s aunt Linda has met Will, and gets her nephew to talk to her about the mess in which he finds himself. Oliver’s three female friends also play mediators—wary of this newcomer’s intentions and fearful that he might “out” Will to assuage his own emotional upset. There is the added twist that Oliver is not the only LGBT student in the school, apparently, and this fact works its way into the carefully-plotted turmoil.

The equal time given to Oliver’s family life, his relationship with his parents, his aunt and uncle, and his little cousins, is so very important in the realistic texture of this book. Oliver is not the only person with problems, and for him the most difficult lesson of all is learning to look around himself, outside himself, to fully grasp what he needs to do. How do you learn to take care of yourself without forgetting to take care of others along the way?

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Winnie

Only mostly amazing

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 24 January 2023

Verified Purchase

I will admit that I was initially disappointed that this was different from the author's other book I loved so much - Perfect on paper. However, the characters really grew on me and I loved watching them grow. Everything made sense in the end and I really loved this book. Sophie Gonzalez really knows how to write YA fiction that is thought provoking, relatable, and enjoyable at the same time!

5 star		61%
4 star		28%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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