Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Thank you NetGalley and Simon Teen for this arc. All opinions are my own. I enjoyed this sapphic rom-com overall. It was very readable and found myself wanting to keep returning to the story. I did like the main characters and their supporting characters, but felt like there were some complex family dynamics that were just barely touched on and then brushed away. I kind of wish other characters and storylines had been explored more (would honestly love more books in this world). I also want to mention that there is bi erasure throughout the book and it was barely mentioned in the end, without resolution or growth. At the end of the day, these are teen characters, so I definitely have some grace for their understandings of themselves and others, just wish the authors had given more time to addressing this. Again, I did enjoy the read and would read more from these authors in the future.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Biphobia, Cursing, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, Lesbophobia, Abandonment, Alcohol
Minor: Sexual content
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-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
Beau is used to straight girls using her as an experiment and then ditching her. She's fed up with popular girl Maia doing what's been done to her many times before, so she goes to a party with the underwear Maia gave her to tell her that it's over. When she's there, she walks in on her nearly kissing another girl, Charm.
Charm has been tutoring Maia in trigonometry and has a feeling that Maia is falling for her, so she goes to the party with the intent to figure things out with her. Unfortunately, after Beau walks in on her and Maia together, Maia flees. Later, she and Beau see her kissing her on-again homophobic boyfriend, and decide to plot revenge: Beau will teach Charm her seduction techniques so that she can teach Charm how to get Maia to fall for her, and then once she's done with her boyfriend for good, Charm will break her heart. Unfortunately, their mutual rule they made as a part of their plan of not falling for each other seems to be a bit difficult to follow.
I really enjoyed this revenge-turned-rom-com. I would agree with other reviewers that it feels like a gayer Do Revenge — it even uses the phrase "do revenge" at one point in the book. If you've watched that movie all the way through and are worried about the more toxic element of the relationship between the two female leads, though, don't worry, there's no situation in this book where one of the girls drives a car into the other on purpose. There is only trashcan manslaughter. The novel is sweet in the end, and even the flaky popular girl is surprisingly sympathetic. All of the characters feel well-rounded, which is surprising for a rom-com like this with a "designated villain".
I also am tired of books that promise revenge arcs but then have the characters unrealistically become obsessed with being perfect moral paragons in the name of "character development", so it was a relief that that didn't happen in this book. Beau, Charm and Maia were all allowed to be messy and imperfect, and there was still character development, but realistic character development. I honestly would've loved to have a chapter from Maia's POV as well, but the book was still great without it.
It was really great to see families represented in this book that weren't the typical nuclear family, with Beau's sister and Charm's aunt being more maternal to the girls than their biological mothers were. The families in this book were also allowed to be messy without being tropey, which I appreciated. Beau and Charm also have ambitions beyond just revenge, which helped them feel like fuller characters. The book also had great (in my opinion) representation of what it's like to be a person of color at a mostly-White high school, since Charm is Black and Maia is mixed.
The book was definitely more sexual than a lot of other YA in terms of the amount of sexual references, which makes sense since they're in their senior year of high school. I'd categorize this as upper YA, and if you're bothered by teens talking a lot about sex, this would not be the book for you.
Call Your Boyfriend will be released July 1 by Simon & Schuster. Thank you to Simon & Schuster, the authors and Netgalley for an advance reader copy.
I'm looking forward to reading more books by these authors!
Charm has been tutoring Maia in trigonometry and has a feeling that Maia is falling for her, so she goes to the party with the intent to figure things out with her. Unfortunately, after Beau walks in on her and Maia together, Maia flees. Later, she and Beau see her kissing her on-again homophobic boyfriend, and decide to plot revenge: Beau will teach Charm her seduction techniques so that she can teach Charm how to get Maia to fall for her, and then once she's done with her boyfriend for good, Charm will break her heart. Unfortunately, their mutual rule they made as a part of their plan of not falling for each other seems to be a bit difficult to follow.
I really enjoyed this revenge-turned-rom-com. I would agree with other reviewers that it feels like a gayer Do Revenge — it even uses the phrase "do revenge" at one point in the book. If you've watched that movie all the way through and are worried about the more toxic element of the relationship between the two female leads, though, don't worry, there's no situation in this book where one of the girls drives a car into the other on purpose. There is only trashcan manslaughter. The novel is sweet in the end, and even the flaky popular girl is surprisingly sympathetic. All of the characters feel well-rounded, which is surprising for a rom-com like this with a "designated villain".
I also am tired of books that promise revenge arcs but then have the characters unrealistically become obsessed with being perfect moral paragons in the name of "character development", so it was a relief that that didn't happen in this book. Beau, Charm and Maia were all allowed to be messy and imperfect, and there was still character development, but realistic character development. I honestly would've loved to have a chapter from Maia's POV as well, but the book was still great without it.
It was really great to see families represented in this book that weren't the typical nuclear family, with Beau's sister and Charm's aunt being more maternal to the girls than their biological mothers were. The families in this book were also allowed to be messy without being tropey, which I appreciated. Beau and Charm also have ambitions beyond just revenge, which helped them feel like fuller characters. The book also had great (in my opinion) representation of what it's like to be a person of color at a mostly-White high school, since Charm is Black and Maia is mixed.
The book was definitely more sexual than a lot of other YA in terms of the amount of sexual references, which makes sense since they're in their senior year of high school. I'd categorize this as upper YA, and if you're bothered by teens talking a lot about sex, this would not be the book for you.
Call Your Boyfriend will be released July 1 by Simon & Schuster. Thank you to Simon & Schuster, the authors and Netgalley for an advance reader copy.
I'm looking forward to reading more books by these authors!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Infidelity, Outing
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Toxic relationship
Minor: Biphobia, Sexual content, Pregnancy