Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales

Evening BookWyrms,

Let’s have the ‘I found a brilliant LGBTQ friendly YA book and now I need you all to read it and love it too’ talk.

Growing up I rarely saw anything in literature that represented me. Same sex relationships were never normalised in the books I read and if by some miracle they were mentioned then it would be almost exclusively reserved for ‘girl-on-girl action’ purely with the purpose of gaining male attention/approval and/or to somehow further another characters plotline. Which I think we can all agree is a pretty shitty plot device by the way.

Now, however, it’s 2020. I’m almost 33 and I’m finally reading books and seeing books promoted that feature characters that live their romantic lives the way I do. In a same sex relationship.

Which is why I want to focus on Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales.

The back of the book caught my eye immediately and when I saw a chance to request a proof I just had to. A big thank you to BKMRK/Hachette Children (Becci Mansell!!) for sending me a copy to read and review.

Here is what caught my eye, besides the vibrant cover (link here for you to see):

OMD Cover Images

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“Ollie and Will were a summer fling. Now they’re classmates. But only one of them is out…”

An utterly joyful, queer reimagining of Grease.

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Firstly who amongst us doesn’t want a queer retelling of the classic that is Grease! I love a good retelling and this one ticks the box and gets extra points because it ‘genderbent’ the role of Sandy.

As you know I’m all about the spoiler free review; I don’t want to give anything away and this book doesn’t publish until the 5th March 2020 (links to pre-order below – and trust me it is worth the read) but here are my thoughts:

Only Mostly Devastated is cute, poignant and heartfelt. It’s a coming of age tale with the perfect mix of angst, drama, heartache, sorrow and love. And when I say ‘love’ I mean all types of love – not just the ‘this guy/girl is my one and only’ – I’m talking friendships, family and self.

In places I felt my heart aching for Ollie and the situation he was being put in at home (it’s not what you think) and at school (it is what you think) and at other times I felt my heart warming as things started to fall into place for him.

I said this in my Instagram posts and stories but Only Mostly Devastated is LGBTQ YA done right!

Gonzales novel doesn’t use the LGBTQ community to further a straight, white boy’s story. She doesn’t camp it up or dress the characters as stereotypes. Gonzales makes each character a rounded, real, relatable person. Being gay in Only Mostly Devastated doesn’t further the plotline – it is the plotline. And this is important. This is key.

There is a particular sentence on page 30 that I am going to reference because for me it just hit home and summed up everything I felt as a teenager growing up and realising I was a lesbian:

“I’d hoped it’d happen more organically, like people would figure it out, and we’d all just know and act like it was normal, because it was normal for me,”

This is Ollie musing about ‘coming out’ at his new school and it just resonates with me so much.

Because, let’s get real and face facts, it is completely normal to be a member of the LGBTQ community.

It is normal to be who you are and to love who you love and to fancy who you fancy. It is NOT a big deal and it is certainly not ‘other’, ‘abnormal’, ‘different’ nor should it ever be considered in those ways. To be a lesbian, to be gay, to be bisexual, to be transgender, or to even be unsure – is to be normal. And I think it is vitally important for these messages to be presented to our children, our teenagers, our young adults, to new adults; so that everyone starts to see just how normal is it.

A couple of other things I adored about Only Mostly Devastated that will only make sense once you’ve read it:

Pink Ladies = Rose Gold Roses - this is a stroke of pure genius.

Labyrinth/Davie Bowie as Jareth reference - this is my favourite film of all time so OMD gets brownie points for that mention and Ollie will always hold a special place in my heart now because of it.

Parents – this was another big thing for me and I’m not going to go into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil the book for you all but the way Gonzales writes about Ollie’s family and Will’s family is just pure perfection.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think everyone should read it.

Here are the links to pre-order:

OMD Pre-Order Amazon

OMD Pre-Order Waterstones

Thanks again to Sophie Gonzales, Becci Mansell and the BKMRK/Hachette Children team.

As always, keep on reading.

Lottie