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.
Review: Leah on the Offbeat has had a bit of a time, lately. I think a lot of people were expecting this to be more like Simon Vs. because it's a sequel. In actuality, this story comes from a different place because, as a character, Leah is very different to Simon. I enjoyed Leah's character for the most part. I liked how straight-forward she was with her friends. I also related to her in those moments where she wouldn't buy food when going out with friends. Even though our situations are different, I think a lot of people understand that feeling. Especially, coming from a fat person, the struggle that comes when friends notice our lack of eating and start to question. It can be a tough time. It was nice getting to see familiar characters again, Simon, Abby, Bram, Nick, etc. I understand that characters can change, but it seemed like such a weird shift sometimes. Specifically, every interaction with Simon and Martin. I think it would have helped if we had more interactions with Simon and Martin so we could see Simon forgiving him. I guess that's a very personal thing because I was treated like crap in high school and I might never forgive those people. It's been 10 years since I graduated and I still feel that way. I just have a hard time understanding how Simon can forgive Martin in such a short amount of time.
In the way of the story, it was cute. I get why people enjoy it as much as they did. I won't say who Leah ends up with, but it definitely struck a couple nerves with me. First off, as many have seen, there was a very unpleasant conversation had between Leah and the love interest about being "a little" bisexual. I guess this mostly bothered me because Leah never came out either. You don't have to come out to have an opinion on your own identity. Just, her insistence on what makes someone bisexual bothered me. I also had a hard time with people dating around in close friend groups. I don't want to expand too much on this because spoilers, but I grew up with a close group of friends who all dated each other. It was always weird and it can suck. A lot. Plus, I felt like some aspects of this never got a proper resolution and that made me upset. There could have been deeper conversations about long-distance relationships that we just never got and that was disappointing.
Overall, Leah was cute, but not what I had hoped it would be. There were good openings for conversations, but the conversations never actually happened and that bummed me out.
3 howls
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