Reviews with content warning for Addiction - I Was Born for This

I read this for my English class. This was super interesting, what the fuck??
To be able to see the story from both sides, who kind of stand opposite of each other, as a fan and the performer, is so though-provoking! I swear, the fandom life is so well written, and I think that The Boys experience is also getting portrayed accurately. Jimmy, Lister and Rowan were a very interesting bunch with and without their problems and struggles.

This is one of those works that are just different (in a good way). The main theme of the book isn't romance, but rather the fame, fans and struggles that come with this lifestyle, while also exploring how life is for those said fans. I quite enjoyed the fact that this book didn't have the characters get super close randomly, like, this situation would be one of those crazy memories that happened, but it didn't lead to anything more.

Furthermore, I'm enlightened.. I feel like I had to confront some parts of my old self while reading this. It also makes me feel understood, perhaps even happy to know that others share such thoughts and feelings as I do. Having been pretty involved in fandoms for years I recognised myself in Angel. It felt great, but it was also kind of eye-opening, I felt called out. It's nice to realise how you've seen the world and how you could see it.

I am not afraid, said Noah

I was born for this.

Content Warnings

kits_den's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted 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? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

samisversion's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring tense 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

Content Warnings

icarusandthesun's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

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

1.0

oh lord oh mighty, i was absolutely not born for this.

i guess i kind of understand why everyone seems to like alice oseman so much. her books have this easy writing style, these pop-culture references and conventionally relatable characters, especially when you're the target audience, which, for this book, means boy band obsessed fangirls (and with fangirls i mean it as a vibe, not necessarily that all of them are girls).
but something about her characters just always strikes me as deeply disconcerting.

wasn't any different with this one - i disliked all of them (except maybe lister).
angel was very self-absorbed in my opinion and just a bad friend to juliet in general. i didn't agree with her most of the time, and her whole talk about how "the fandom is actually such a comforting, supporting, respectful place and most people don't want to be with the band members", i didn't really buy it. also, i just hate her for shipping rowan and jimmy. shipping "real life" people is such a disgusting thing to do, and such a breach of personal privacy.
i didn't like her attitude either; the way she seemed to feel superior to everyone just pissed me off a bit. and the self-pitying phrases like "it's all my fault", "i'm the problem" - peak melodramatic teenage behavior.

juliet was honestly just bland, like her character could've not existed and nothing would've changed. and i don't quite understand what her problem was. she seemed to like mac and just because he "lied" about liking something (something he does like btw, just not as much as they do), she acts like that's the end of the world. that she stopped liking him for being a douchebag, yk that's something i can get behind. but the whole lying thing was written to be so prominent so that it seems like that's what put her over the edge to finally abandon mac. idk, it was weird.

mac was mac. definitely a douchebag, but he wasn't as bad as everyone acted like he was in my opinion. oseman just completely villainized him for no real reason.

now, jimmy. god, how i hated jimmy. he's such a child, literally. his whole crying and running off and not communicating and weird, illogical behavior... i cannot. i don't even want to dwell on him because man, what an absolute fleabag.

rowan was as bland as juliet, and bliss was written to be cool but i just disliked her and her whole personality anyway lol.

and i know most of these characters were written to be flawed so that the inevitable character development hits the reader like a damned truck, but it's not helping when all of the character development happens in the last 50 pages and the remaining 330 pages, the characters are absolute ass and wholly unlikable.

we don't even have to talk about the plot and how unrealistic it was. like all of it. and it made me not enjoy the book at all, because everything was so convenient and highly unlikely and frustrating.

and can we please, please talk about the god-motive in this book? because it seems like no one talks about it. the amount of religion and religious messages and stuff were so out of place.
it's cool that these characters believe in some sort of religion, i really don't care. but the joan of arc quotes about death and sin felt so out of place, because it's a fanfic-y young adult book!!!
and the woman in the tube suddenly preaching about god and god's plan...
that sort of felt a little bit like propaganda, ngl.

i also didn't buy the whole mental illness spiel that some of these characters've got going on. whenever something inconvenient happens, they all go "i hate my life", "i don't want to live", "i'm worthless". which i get because that's what teenagers do, being stupid and irrational about their own emotions. but still, it was annoying. like mental illnesses are a joke, can be dismissed as soon as someone is doing fine again.

idk. it's safe to say that the book wasn't for me. i'm starting to think it's just an author-reader mismatch and that's completely fine. i think alice oseman is a good person, and i'm glad there are people who enjoy her books.
just ... not me.

Content Warnings