Reviews with content warning for Acephobia/Arophobia - Ophelia After All

Reviews tagging 'Acephobia/Arophobia'

Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie

19 reviews

emmieanna's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I went into this book with no expectations, as I don’t really read romance but this has always been on my radar and was chosen for a YA bookclub that I run. It is safe to say that I loved it! The Hamlet references were stunning but not too in your face and the cast of characters were all likeable in their own ways. Did not expect Ophelia’s greatest help to come from where it did and enjoyed that the characters surprised me by falling outside of the roles I had predicted for them at the beginning. I felt more attached to Ophelia than any protagonist in a romance novel, maybe because it fed into the ‘anti-romance’ trope that I love so dearly.

I think I really needed this book to open my eyes to some of my own internalised homophobia towards bisexuality, but didn’t realise it until I read it. Raquel Marie has a way of manipulating the characters’ experiences that made me look inward and such a beautiful understanding of character development.

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jachnax's review

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emotional inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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ghostlyprince's review

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emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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nerdysread's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I thought it was going to be a cute coming of age rom-com. Well, nope. I cried. It broke my heart and put it back together
PS: Ophelia is a messy girl

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thebookpaiges's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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btwnprintedpgs's review against another edition

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hopeful reflective tense 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? It's complicated

4.5

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literarylocd's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

full review: https://medium.com/@isareadssalot/ophelia-after-all-a-review-401b0661e707

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amandalorianxo's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring 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

3.25

This is definitely a young adult, coming out & coming of age + to terms with your identity being fluid. I’m not sure what the year was supposed to be but I can see this being a novel that took place a few years ago. I was already aware of the terminology that Wesley told Ophelia but for those who aren’t familiar it felt like a small crash / cliff notes of different sexualities. The identity crisis that Ophelia goes through is reliable for a lot of teenagers, especially in this day and age. I wasn’t a fan of Lindsay or Ophelia’s mom :/ In actuality, the friendships in this book really made me think about my own friendships in high school. I did like the addition of Miguel (Dad) talking in Spanish with it being normalized. There was a lot of back and forth & while this is a great debut, I’m hoping for more consistency with the author’s future work aka less whiplash in the drama.

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kelseyrm's review

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emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

okay i was not expecting to love this book as much as i did holy fuck
ophelia, at first i thought you were just another ya protagonist, like cmon she loves to garden, is boy crazy, only wears clothes with flower prints on them? thats some colleen hoover type shit
but i realize the whole point of the book was she was trying to break free of those stereotypes! she was so relatable and loveable omg im sorry i ever doubted you ophelia hope ur doing well
also love talia she was so great. i have a headcanon now that she's a stay (bc they mentioned she likes kpop) and her bias is felix bc i said so. wesley is too, chan bias. im right argue with the wall
also i loved how

talia and ophelia weren't endgame. they did it so well, it felt so much more realistic than other high school romances. also loved how talia reacted when ophelia kissed her shes so much nicer than me lol bc i would not have been that forgiving tbh...

also hot take, wes x sammie anyone...? sammie called wes muscular just a few too many times to be coincidence?
overall this book was an amazing read. just the right amount of angst too. such amazing, loveable characters. only one of the main characters was white too, so great that an lgbtq book is including that many poc, bc lots of ya wlw or mlm books always have like one token poc. read this rn!!! you wont regret it!!
only subtracting 0.25 bc it wasnt rly that much of a pageturner for me, like at parts the plot was a little bland, but it picked up!!

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maple_dove's review

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emotional lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

SDKJASLDHASDIOSADIOASDOS I DID NOT EXPECT THAT?!

Also, I took me 10 days to finish reading this book when I usually only take a few days to finish one. High school WHYYYYY--

I Liked

That this wasn't about Ophelia getting the girl or discovering her queerness because of a relationship. This book was about discovering and loving yourself, which was such a nice change. I loved it. 💛
The complexity was amazing.
How AWARE this book is (the knowledge of a variety of identities).

I Didn't Like

Sammie. I'M NOT SORRY! Sammie was a jerk, and you know it. Hell, he even admitted it at the end of the book. I'm glad he admitted it, apologized (actually, not making excuses), and started seeing a therapist to self-improve. I didn't dislike him every time he made an appearance in the book, I'll admit. It was more like 50/50 like and dislike.
I don't belong in a big friend group (or any friend group with more than three people, tbh), nor do I like being in them so I can't relate to the friend group dynamics.

Favorite Quotes:

Virginal as I am, my golden sexual-advice rule is that if you can't talk about it, you probably shouldn't be doing it. Seriously, be a little mature.

"Ophelia, it's great to see you. What grade are you in now, tenth?"
Daf stifles a laugh. I forcefully hand him back the wine.
"I'm actually a senior."
"No way!" He gasps in that classic I'm An Adult And Cannot Process You Aging At The Same Rate As Me For Some Reason way and turns to Mom.

"But sometimes, when you've known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it's hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you'd be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don't just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming."

I know kissing and liking Talia shouldn't change who I am to them, or to myself, but it does. And maybe they'd say 'Oh, this doesn't change anything!' or 'You're still the same Ophelia we know and love!' but it does, and I'm not the same. And they can't possibly understand that. It's not just that I'm scared they'll hate me for this; I'm scared they won't even see it."
"People confuse acceptance with erasure," he says with the weight of understanding that only someone else who has battled this same internal conflict possibly could. (pg. 284)

I agree with this so much. "This doesn't change anything" and "You're still the same" just never felt right. Of course being queer and/or trans changes things. That's the point.

"Did I ever tell you why I chose Ophelia though?"
"No," I admit, surprised I never asked. "I always figured you wanted something more unique. Or that Dad vetoed Juliet." Dad never wanted to watch adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, claiming it was too tragic for him. The irony of him still loving Hamlet isn't lost on me.
She laughs. "No, he always knew it was my dream to name a child after one of them. Juliet and Ophelia were always my favorite because they are two of the most quickly dismissed among people who refuse to dig past the surface narrative. Juliet is remembered as a foolish teenage girl who threw away her life for a boy she hardly knew, and Ophelia is remembered more for her virginity and inability to accept Hamlet's rejection than anything else."
"Great legacies you left me."
"But that's not who those girls were," she corrects firmly. "Romeo was just as much a hopeless romantic as Juliet, and they gave their lives to show the world that true love mattered more than senseless hatred. Juliet cared enough about her family to die so they could live brighter, wiser lives. I respected her as a character for being more mature than most give her credit for."
"Then why'd you pick Ophelia?" I ask, dusting my hands against my jeans. She narrows her eyes at the crumbs I'm spreading in the car, but keeps going.
"Ophelia was all those things too. But she also wore her heart on her sleeve. She wasn't 'mad' in her final scene; she was grieving without shame. She was begging for someone to hear her desperation beneath the offered flowers."

I recognize the look in his eyes, not quite hunger for something deeper. Longing, love, profound admiration. I'm sure he'd find the same things in my eyes when I look at Talia too, and instead of swallowing that sting of realization, I embrace it. Running from these feelings did me no good. I don't cling to the idea that I have a romantic future with Talia anymore, a future I'm still mourning the loss of, but I shouldn't have to pretend I never wanted one. (pg. 327)

Agatha was right. Prom was never about the dresses or the dates or the ridiculous theme. It was about celebrating, through all those little details, the feeling that holy shit, we actually survived high school.
Well, almost survived it. (pg. 329)

Conclusion:

In the end, my lack of interest for realistic fiction kind of blew it for me. 😓 I know what you're going to say, "ThEn WhY dId YoU rEaD tHiS bOoK?" Because I still wanted to read it. :) And will I continue to read realistic fiction? Yes.

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