a plethora of miscellaneous ideas that popped into my head and refused to stay inside. from random proses to poetry to book reviews: this book has it all for your reading pleasure :)
Okay so this is my first time reviewing a book so don't judge me if it's shitty. I just finished reading it (11:27 pm, Thursday, 22nd March, 2018). It took me 7 hours to finish the book. The fastest I've ever read. It was so good. Okay rambling aside the review:
MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
This book is about Aristotle (or Ari as he renamed himself) and Dante discovering themselves as a person. They are finding out the truth of their lives and who they are.
In a way I fell more in love with the writing than the plot itself. I mean, don't get me wrong I love the plot (more on that later) but the writing was just...breathtaking. I stopped about four times in the book where I just sat there like "wow". I told my sister how I loved Benjamin Alire Sáenz's writing style and she said "What? You like the font of the book?" And it made me laugh so much. At the end of the book, in the biography, it said he was a poet and an author. And you don't think about it until the end of the book how those two kind of meshes together for him. The whole book didn't just sound like a story; it sounded like a poem.
Anyway, I can probably talk about his writing for the rest of my life but no one cares about that. On to the plot. When I found this book on booktube I thought, "oh its another over hyped book. But I'll give it a try anyway." And oh boy am I glad I did. Towards the beginning of the book, when Dante was kind of not really ashamed of his heritage and feeling out of place, I related to him so much. Throughout the whole book I related to him. I related to Ari a lot more towards the end. It felt like I was on that journey with them. It felt genuine and real. It was I think one of the most true to reality books I've ever read. Its set in the late 1980's and included a lot of problems LGBTQ+ faced during that time. Some parts were hard to read and some parts frustrating but then a feeling of achievement when you stop and think about how much things have progressed since then. It wasn't too heavy on those subjects. I would've liked to see more of it. Benjamin Alirej Sainze might be one my favourite author now. I am planning to read all his works. This review is a mess. I haven't even talked about the book. You'd understand when you read it.
It's two boys' journey to discovering what the hell they are and what they want in life. You get one stupidly thick and difficult teen (Ari) and a soft hearted, poem loving, bird saving artist (Dante) and you follow along to their journey of self discovery. I recommend you read this book 5/5 (If you're into mxm stories).
Another thing I wanted to mention. You can totally tell that this book was written by a guy. More often than not, gay books would be written by women who had no experience into any of what was happening. I think its an #ownvoice novel and you could tell from the tone of the story how the writer didn't try to sugarcoat anything and wrote it raw. It wasn't targeted at female teens who fetishes bxb and only read it because its hot. Its targeted at anyone who enjoys a contemporary YA novel. It felt so refreshing reading an honest book after finding so many disturbing ones here on wattpad. I just can't.
Here is the goodreads rating and the description of the book:
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All in all, I love this book. I cried twice while reading and personally it hit quite close to home in some parts which i think made it more special to me. If you ever get the chance to read this book, please do. I promise you'll love it.
