Dumped. Again. And normally I wouldn't mind. But right now, my best friend and source of solace, Jupiter Sanchez, is ignoring me to text some girl.
Rae Evelyn Chin
I assumed "new girl" would be synonymous with "pariah," but Jupiter and Courtney make me feel like I'm right where I belong. I also want to kiss him. And her. Which is . . . perplexing.
Jupiter Charity-Sanchez
The only thing worse than losing the girl you love to a boy is losing her to your boy. That means losing him, too. I have to make a move. . . .
Review: I quite enjoyed Odd One Out which isn't a surprise because I also enjoyed Dear Martin. The idea behind this story is that we observe this love triangle through the perspectives of everyone involved. Nic pulled this off quite well and, regardless of which perspective I was in, I wanted to see the outcome of this messy friendship. The motivations of each person felt genuine to me. That isn't do say I agreed with everything the characters did. One of them has sex for an awful reason, and I say this from a place of understanding because I have also had sex for awful reasons. People make decisions and grow from it. I feel like that's apparent in this book. The love between these characters also felt true. There was never a point where I thought these characters didn't care for one another. I appreciated seeing how they tried to put their friendship ahead of the actual relationships.
This is one of the few books where I enjoyed seeing the different perspectives. Normally, I don't really feel like we get a whole lot out of new viewpoints, but this book definitely gave us more dimensions. On top of that, the characters were able to recognize when they messed up. Either in the present or in the past, they own up to their mistakes. All of the characters manage to have good conversations with each other or outside friends about sex and sexuality. If nothing else, I think this book does an excellent job of showing that there doesn't have to be a specific label to define a person. Nor do they have to keep labels their entire lives. Attraction is definitely a fluid thing and I loved how Odd One Out handled this. On the note of the title, I liked how every character felt like the "odd one out" at one point or another. They were never intentionally making the other person feel left out, but it managed to happen. The way Nic was able to craft these relationships was incredibly well done.
5 howls
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