Reviews - All Hail the Underdogs

433 reviews for:

All Hail the Underdogs

E.L. Massey

4.36 AVERAGE

raeganbillinger's review against another edition

4.5

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

ellaodolan's review against another edition

5.0

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

distractinglysimple's review against another edition

5.0

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective relaxing 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

ivanareadsalot's review against another edition

5.0

This book was an experience I'm still reeling from NGL. I've been sitting with a really big feeling, but it's comprised of a whole bunch of, well, feelings. Like one of those tapestries from the middle ages with 12 million fascinating and hideous elements to its visual storytelling, drawing your eye this way and that across the surface... this whole book was like an unfurling myriad of love expressions, made up of everything wonderful to ferocious, running the gamut from sharp toothed to cable knit cozy. Rome and Damien's love story feels like both a fantasy, in their finding and loving one another, and a nightmare, in the reality of the lives they live outside of each other.

Rome and Damien are 17/18 and constantly staring down the maw of that bleak black place inside that houses every fear and insecurity. so this story is rife with that mechanism of scrambling for purchase while navigating everything that's gone (or going) to shit. it's society's ugliness underscoring everything precious. but there's perseverance and real world quality in these characters, because for every marginalized trial they face they find a way to win. and it's thrilling to read!

Massey's books are always spellbinding and deeper than anything i could have imagined from the start. this installment is probably the most thought provoking and prickly, but it's enriching, multifaceted, textured stuff.

09-26-2023 edit: [this review took a long time to write and it took a lot out of me. I’m still thinking about it now, a day later, an ounce of coffee in but wearing my heart really thick.

Spoiler

I’m still teary eyed and choked up thinking about these young men just trying to live and be and then finley appears in their lives and throws even more responsibility on their shoulders but that’s the point I think. that you don’t know you never know. but it's poetic that the same reason the same pressures that caused damien’s parents to give him up and rome’s to abuse and abandon him now landed in the boys’ lives and THEY did the opposite by choosing to be better than the people who failed them.

it's not an ideal ending, even if it comes off as a fairytale HEA with the showy successes like poetry awards and nhl contracts. but the takeaway is in the gravitas of growing and in the standing in their reclaimed power that happened before that. it's the way love can steal into the cracks of hurting hearts, filling every gash and slash and cut in an instant. the way they both fell in love with finley at first sight. in a blink. in a breath. and chose her in that moment. chose to be her person, her family. to give her beingness measure as a known instead of other. it's deeply affecting.]

All Hail the Underdogs celebrates the subtle intimacies of falling in love, and along with the social discourse so rare to read with any kind of sincerity in MM romances, i think that makes this one of the more impactful and moving and important reads i've had so far this year. looking forward to rereading these first 3 books as well as everything else E.L. Massey releases in the future!