Trigger warnings: Illness, death
Synopsis: When Ollie meets his dream guy, Will, over summer break, he thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After. But once summer’s ended, Will stops texting him back, and Ollie finds himself one prince short of a fairytale ending. To complicate the fairytale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country—Will’s school—where Ollie finds that the sweet, affectionate and comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted—and, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.
Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship. But as Will starts ‘coincidentally’ popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, Ollie finds his resolve weakening.
The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again.
Right?
Right.
Review: Only Mostly Devastated sounded like the perfect, gay romance. I liked Ollie a lot and it was interesting seeing how he uprooted his life and had to adjust to a new setting. Ollie was pretty open about being gay which was a nice change of pace. Will, on the other hand, was not out. This made his actions seem a bit cruel because he didn't really acknowledge Ollie for awhile. I knew this was going to happen because this book was pitched as being similar to Grease. It was still rough to read because Ollie cared about Will, and I didn't really understand why. We get a few flashbacks, but I didn't feel like we got enough sweet moments of them together for me to see the chemistry.
One thing I enjoyed a lot was Ollie's friend group. I will say that, at first, one of the girls was mean to Ollie because he was out and proud and she was a closeted bisexual. She was the only other LGBT+ character in Ollie's friend group and I didn't like how they seemed to be against each other for the first half of the book. No, not everyone who is in the LGBT+ community gets along, but there are only 2 primary queer characters in the story and they weren't nice to each other much at all. It got pretty tiresome to read. Thankfully, they do come together, but I wish that wasn't just another hurdle in the story.
A cute romance, but it missed the mark for me.
3 howls
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