Reviews with content warning for Racism - If This Gets Out

Negativity ahead so if this was like, your fave of the year, do not @ me.

This was one of my most anticipated if not THE most anticipated read of this year and honestly, I wanted more. It was enjoyable enough to get me through to the end, but I just had so many issues with it that made it really hard for me to want to pick this up.

Positives first: The romance was very sweet. I have no complaints about Zach and Ruben's relationship. They made me smile and laugh, and swoon a lot of the time. These two nerds were made for each other. The scenes where they're sort of awkward around each other consistently made me giggle out loud. In the first 30 or so pages, there is already pining, which is for sure something that I was immediately signed up for. Additionally, the bromance between the band members and how much the boys valued their fans was very sweet and touched my heart in all the right places.

And then here is where I'm going to be a little cranky.

There were some things about this book that just made me...cringe? The use of Twitter words felt forced and very "hello fellow kids." The writing itself wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either in my opinion. There were some adjustments to the overall plot that I would make, and I think I would make this shorter overall if it were me. I think that the book became confused about what it wanted to be after the first half was over - the tone shifted and it became something darker that I wasn't really ready for. The most glaring issue for me is the women in this book. Pretty much none of the women who appear in this book are portrayed in a positive light, and for a book with very few female characters, that is a problem for me. The female characters that were present and prevalent were either abusive, totally clueless, or just randoms that showed up for 2 pages and left. After having these thoughts myself and talking to a friend about it, this alone made the book go down half a star for me. I wanted so much more from this and I was let down. *shrug*

Content Warnings

jewishpadme's review against another edition

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slow-paced

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

1.5

Content Warnings

bisexualwentworth's review

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emotional funny 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

4.0

I was really pleasantly surprised by this book. I'm morally opposed to real person fanfiction shipping real people on principle, so I was wary of the whole concept of If This Gets Out, but it was executed really well.

Ruben and Zach are two members of a popular boy band who fall in love and have to keep their relationship secret, and that relationship definitely forms the emotional core of this book. But the plot also gives time to the other two members of the band, Angel and Jon, and explores some difficult subject matter pretty gracefully.

I really appreciated the bisexual representation, which Sophie Gonzales always does excellently. I enjoy forbidden romance, and I thought that aspect of the book was also executed well. The familial relationships were difficult to read—one of the characters has an abusive parent, and there's another truly awful parent character in the book as well—but they were difficult in a way that felt realistic and was acknowledged by the characters.

The audiobook narrator put me off a little bit at first because he sounded quite a bit older than the characters, but I got used to the narration pretty quickly.

If you like secret relationships and fictional celebrities and queer young adults, you'll probably enjoy this book!

I just want to reiterate that it very much reads like a One Direction fanfic at times, and the knowledge that the book was at least partially inspired by that sort of thing did make me pretty uncomfortable.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Content Warnings

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