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A review by claudiacantread
Anything But Fine by Tobias Madden
4.0
Do I like it? Or do I like Australian accents? Both?
Anything but Fine follows Luca, a gay teenage boy who’s life falls apart after he falls down the stairs, breaking his foot and his ballet dancing dreams. Luca finds himself having to find out who he is outside of the small ballet world he was in for the first 16 years of his life. New school, new friends, new self.
So I think your ability to like this story will be entirely dependent on your ability to like Luca as a character. The story is told entirely through his perspective and he is the entire crux of the story. If you don’t like him then I doubt the story will be good for you. I, however, found him very likable and sympathetic even when he was being a little shit. Which would happen sometimes, he is a teenage boy going through A LOT. I found something totally relatable in the removing of oneself from things that upset him and the way of insisting everything is fine and generally acting fine when you are taking things basically day by day, minute by minute. But not really being able to look beyond or around that small frame of time without having a little bit of a breakdown.
Luca is definitely very passive throughout the story which may frustrate some, but felt like a real reaction to the things happening to him. His entire personality was based around one thing and suddenly it was gone. He kind of forms his entire personality around the next ‘thing’ and doesn’t really discover the issues with that until the end. But again, this felt realistic to me. Because the character journey was him discovering himself though, it means he doesn’t really become a ‘whole’ person until near the end. Which may be frustrating (but it helps if you are listening to it in an Australian accented audiobook).
Luca gets involved with TJ, who is basically the most popular guy in school and supposedly, straight. TJ wants to hide their relationship until he can figure it out himself. I actually really liked the direction this went in, as both Luca and TJ are painted as sympathetic and neither really in the wrong for their feelings over the matter.
He also makes friends with Amina. Who was a great character and I can’t believe she has less than five million friends for being so nice. I did like that they called out racism in Australia through her character which I feel like is kind of ignored a lot.
His relationship with his dad is also really interesting. I liked their dynamic and how they both grew from his accident.
There’s definitely some teenage embarrassing cringe moments that I struggled with as a second hand embarrassment sufferer.
Overall, I enjoyed this! The Australian accents really smoothed over most of the faults I might have and made the characters all super likable.
Thanks to Netgalley and RB media for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!
Anything but Fine follows Luca, a gay teenage boy who’s life falls apart after he falls down the stairs, breaking his foot and his ballet dancing dreams. Luca finds himself having to find out who he is outside of the small ballet world he was in for the first 16 years of his life. New school, new friends, new self.
So I think your ability to like this story will be entirely dependent on your ability to like Luca as a character. The story is told entirely through his perspective and he is the entire crux of the story. If you don’t like him then I doubt the story will be good for you. I, however, found him very likable and sympathetic even when he was being a little shit. Which would happen sometimes, he is a teenage boy going through A LOT. I found something totally relatable in the removing of oneself from things that upset him and the way of insisting everything is fine and generally acting fine when you are taking things basically day by day, minute by minute. But not really being able to look beyond or around that small frame of time without having a little bit of a breakdown.
Luca is definitely very passive throughout the story which may frustrate some, but felt like a real reaction to the things happening to him. His entire personality was based around one thing and suddenly it was gone. He kind of forms his entire personality around the next ‘thing’ and doesn’t really discover the issues with that until the end. But again, this felt realistic to me. Because the character journey was him discovering himself though, it means he doesn’t really become a ‘whole’ person until near the end. Which may be frustrating (but it helps if you are listening to it in an Australian accented audiobook).
Luca gets involved with TJ, who is basically the most popular guy in school and supposedly, straight. TJ wants to hide their relationship until he can figure it out himself. I actually really liked the direction this went in, as both Luca and TJ are painted as sympathetic and neither really in the wrong for their feelings over the matter.
He also makes friends with Amina. Who was a great character and I can’t believe she has less than five million friends for being so nice. I did like that they called out racism in Australia through her character which I feel like is kind of ignored a lot.
His relationship with his dad is also really interesting. I liked their dynamic and how they both grew from his accident.
There’s definitely some teenage embarrassing cringe moments that I struggled with as a second hand embarrassment sufferer.
Overall, I enjoyed this! The Australian accents really smoothed over most of the faults I might have and made the characters all super likable.
Thanks to Netgalley and RB media for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!