Reviews tagging 'Body shaming'

Nur fast am Boden zerstört by Sophie Gonzales

35 reviews

nothingrhymeswithrachel's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Obviously the romance of this story is beautiful, and I am obsessed with Will and Ollie. But, Aunt Linda’s story line in this book is what really brought this book together for me. So often romance books forget about the rest of the family involved in someone’s life, but family was a major part of the plot in this book. I cried several times during this book and I have never even been closely affected by cancer, I cannot imagine what it would do to those who have. Absolutely beautifully written, I loved that story line. The only gripe I have is that Lara’s character development seems fake. She never apologizes for her actions, she doesn’t even seem to change. She just suddenly has an excuse for why she was so mean to everyone around her. We’re supposed to like her by the end but I just could not do it, she needed to be held accountable instead of consistently coddled by her friends. Anyway, this book is very good. It turns out I am a big fan of Sophie Gonzales.
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whatiskatelynreading's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

CW: homophobia, outing, fatphobia, cancer, PCOS

I really wanted to love this book, like really wanted to. I kept reading hoping to find that thing, that piece of it that makes everyone on booksta say they loved it, but that didn’t happen for me. 

Sold as a “Grease” inspired story about two queer boys who have a passionate summer fling and then realize they’re at the same school after a cross-country move, I was fully prepared for this to be a sunny summer favorite. But unfortunately, this one isn’t for me. 

I found the relationship between the main character and the love interest to be really toxic and I didn’t even want them to be together. It’s clear that Will isn’t ready to come out, which is fine and it’s not right of Ollie to keep expecting him to make this big sweeping romantic public gesture, but it/ also clear that Will totally disrespects Ollie in public over and over again. Ollie deserved better and Will deserved to be able to explore his sexuality on his own timeline. 

Another issue I had with this book was the entire “arc” for the character Niamh. Niamh aims to be a model, and is a plus-sized side character who experiences lots of fatphobic comments in this book. We see snippets of her dieting and her exercise obsession, to the point where she’s foggy and dazed in conversations, and the author explains it all away with a little thing called PCOS. As someone with Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, I think it’s important to note that it can look really different from person to person and that diagnosis isn’t always easy. Niamh’s declaration that she has PCOS and that’s why she can’t lose weight and so she’s decided to be a plus sized model doesn’t ring out like the body-positive battle cry I think it was meant to, but rather felt like a bandaid solution to her character’s struggle by explaining away her weight as a medical condition. It felt like a poorly developed attempt to make every side character have a “thing”. I thought it was not only totally unnecessary to the plot but also really disheartening. Why did we see all the terrible comments they made to Niamh and watch her get hurt over and over only to have her big moment be to say “I medically can’t lose weight so don’t comment on it anymore”. Don’t comment on it period! This moment kind of ruined the book for me. 

I’m sure this book was a lighthearted romp for a lot of people, and I’m happy for you if it was, but that just wasn’t my experience with it.
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spearly's review against another edition

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lighthearted sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Sometimes in life, terrible things happened. And sometimes really, really amazing things happened. And sometimes, those things all kind of happened at once.

Only Mostly Devastated follows Ollie, who, after visiting his sick aunt in North Carolina for the summer and having a summer romance there with a boy named Will, ends up moving to NC so he and his family can stay close to her as she gets worse.

This was a cute story. Well.. it had its cute moments. Honestly, I've been on a teen YA romance kick lately and, after reading some pretty great stories (including one from the same author, Sophie Gonzales called Perfect on Paper), this fell strictly middle of the pack. Nothing special. Not something I would read again, and not something I'll really remember after I write this review.

I won't pretend to know or understand the queer teen experience. I'm sure there's a lot of authenticity to Will and his fear of coming out, to Ollie having to sneak around to be with the guy he likes. And I'm sure, with all of Will's fears, a lot of his behaviour made sense ie.
ignoring Ollie at school, getting close with his ex when his friends start to suspect, not speaking up when his friends make homophobic jokes
but that doesn't mean I liked it. I was frustrated with Will. I was frustrated with Ollie. I didn't understand Lara's brattiness (
and yes, it's implied it has to do at least partly with some inernalized biphobia, but that doesn't excuse how shitty she treats her friends. At one point, she literally tells her friend Naimh, who's a bit overweight and wants to be a model, that a real model wouldn't be eating what she was.
. You don't need to give the girl with a secret a mean streak to make her 3-dimensional, you know?

But then I think about it, and I'm like... well, I'm sure there were moments when I was in high school that I said some shitty things too. That I acted bratty. That I was judgy. And yet, despite these all being valid points, that doesn't mean I like to read about characters like that.

In the end, Only Mostly Devastated just didn't hold a candle to some of the other books I've read in the genre, especially when it comes to queer romance.
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klavin_lovell's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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marissasbooks's review against another edition

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emotional funny medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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