Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Absolutely loved this book! First time in a long time I felt like I couldn’t put a story down. The main characters were sad, and cute, and authentic, and awkward, and lovable; but above all, hopeful. Would read this again and highly recommend!

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nenya's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.25

I must say, as a total, this book was somewhat of a disappointment. It tackled teenage confusion, angst and the journey of sexual discovery but in a - to me - not very groundbreaking way. Rather, most of the time it felt insufferably basic and like I‘d read and seen pretty much exactly that before (which is kind of the case). Furthermore, I mostly disliked the writing style because to me, it made the impression of wanting to be edgy or alternative but just ending up being boring. It also made me feel quite detached from the story (I recognize that this was done on purpose to properly show Ari’s way of thinking and well… it is first person narration after all so that is overall a good thing but in this case, it just didn’t quite work for me most of the time) However, I wouldn’t say that this is a bad book - for one I believe that my expectations were set a bit too high (after all, not every popular book is something for everyone) and I might quite simply be older than the target audience, plus I think there were some things done and represented very well. The relationships Ari and Dante have with their parents for example - they are each uniquely different but yet the same in the sense that these children experience immense parental love and a generally healthy relationship with their parents and are furthermore able to recognize this and reciprocate - which I think is very beautiful and also new to read about, since a good parent-son relationship is not very often written about in coming of age or YA pieces of fiction. It also showed parents as people with their flaws and traumas and how it is a part of growing up to stop idealizing one’s parents and instead seeing them for who they are.
I also liked reading about the Mexican-American experiences of the two (however, I as a non-Mexican am not qualified to judge about how well this was done. Since the author himself is Latino, I imagine it to be quite authentic and hopefully relatable to a certain audience), because this once again seems generally under-represented in YA fiction. I also have to admit, despite the (for me) unappealing writing and narration style, the characters - and I mean each of them, even the dog (who has my whole heart btw) most definitely have a lot depth, authenticity, show flaws as well as growth and courage. The ending (which I won’t spoil here) also seemed very fitting and I actually liked it a lot more than the rest of the book. Once again, this isn’t a bad or superficial book but it just didn’t really catch me - I think I‘d recommend this to people between the age of 14 and 16/17 (and I mean, everyone is different, so I wouldn’t exclude people older than that, but as someone who is older, it didn’t seem like quite the right book)

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jasmineslibraryy's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

5.0

ari was so incredibly relatable. i love best friends to lovers. i love slowburn. this book was perfect for me. alexa play midnight rain by taylor swift <3

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booknerd_life's review

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emotional inspiring reflective

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

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danny_fox's review

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

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

3.5

Boy, oh boy, I finally finished this book after 3 months.

This book low-key made me not want to read at all for quite some time, and I'll list some reasons as to why. As always, here are 3 things I liked about this book, and 3 I didn't.

What I liked:

- The way it was written is really unique. Although, I did find it annoying that every other page didn't have a page number written on it, I still found the way it was written to be interesting as well as easy to read. There is something relaxing about it. I quite liked it!

- The characters are really loveable. They felt realistic and were absolutely not bland. As someone who values characters the most when it comes to stories, it was a major plus for me to see that the characters were very nicely written. They had their flaws and they were quite relatable as well, which for a book like this is very important. And the character development was rather nicely done. I really enjoyed seeing the characters learn and change.

- I learned some stuff from this book. As I said, the characters are rather relatable at times, so I did manage to sort of see myself in these characters. Which, then, helped me realize some things about myself or people around me. Even though I may not really be the targeted audience for this book, I still found it impressive just how many times I would read a paragraph and think "man, this sure sounds familiar" as it reminded me of people I know. Definitely a major plus for that, since I feel like that's very important for a book like this.

What I didn't like:

- The writing isn't the best. Finding typos in a published book was always a big no for me. And this book had quite a couple of typos in it. Also, the dialogue was... strange at times. It felt off and not very accurate to how teens talk, in my opinion. I find dialogue to be very important, so this really made me dislike the book.

- Ari as a character could have been better written. For the first part of the book, I found him to be extremely annoying. I get that he was sad and what not, but characters like him are my least favorite type of characters. It sort of reminded me of an opposite of a Mary Sue, where it felt like he was just flaws. Katniss from Hunger Games had the same issue and I ended up dropping that book just because of how much she annoyed me. But, Ari does get his character development, so props for that. In the second half of the book, I did actually quite like him.

BUT, the ending and him realizing that he likes Dante was kinda rushed and a bit too sudden. There were barely any signs that he actually likes Dante in a romantic sense, or even that he likes boys for that matter, and then his dad was like "you like him" and Ari was like "okay" and that's it. It felt rushed and sudden and there was not enough of a build up to it.

- The book was boring at times and rather underwhelming. As I said, this book annoyed me and bored me so much, that I stopped reading for some time just cause I didn't want to read this book. The second half is definitely more fun than the first, I will say that. And, although, this book tried to touch on a lot of important and serious topics, it felt like it never explored them enough. It was more like it just touched on them and then moved on. For a book that's all about learning to discover who you are and what not, I feel like it definitely didn't explore and talk about that concept as much as it could have.

Final thoughts:

Overall, it's a book. It's an average book. Not the best book, not the worst book. I would suggest it to teens (especially boys) as I think they just might learn a thing or two from it. But, I find the book to be very forgettable, mostly because my face while reading it was just 😐 the whole time. There are so many other things that I didn't even mention here that bothered me, but I don't want this review to be longer than the book itself. But, hey, it was decent, and I can see why so many people like it.

Content Warnings

anxieteaandbiscuits12's review against another edition

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emotional funny sad 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

4.25

I did enjoy the book overall but I did find it a little difficult to get into for the first 100 pages, but that could be because this had been sitting on my shelf for about a year before I made myself read it, I felt that the beginning was quite slow and a little repetitive as we were introduced to Dante and Ari’s friendship, thought the characters were established quite well. I did struggle with the time transition between sections and sometimes having to double check who was speaking during long periods of dialog. However, after a ‘incident in the rain’ I found that both grew a little more and matured and I found it easier to invest myself in the book and by the end I was wishing I had brought the sequel so I could read more about Ari and Dante’s new relationship as it was such a beautifully written transition and I loved how the change between relationships was written.

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schivakumaran's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective 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

4.0

Adored this book to my core. Absolutely divine read. The characters feel so real and true and the honest portrayal of growing up into adulthood and the challenges young people face was artfully done. This book dealt with very heavy subjects in such a realistic and compassionate loving way.

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