A review by juushika
The Pretender by K.A. Applegate

5.0

I love a good Tobias book, and this one seems like it must have been particularly fun to write. Applegate seem to have run out of fucks to give--the explicit references to Jake and Cassie's interracial relationship and "hard to imagine humans welcoming seven-foot-tall goblins into the local Boy Scout troop when they couldn't even manage to tolerate some gay kid" are both refreshingly, even startlingly, honest. And this is Tobias at peak woobie. The writing isn't incredibly consistent--Tobias seems to cope well as a supporting character but then has sudden crises when he's a narrator, and Rachel's insistence that he give up the fight seems out of character--but I appreciate it when episodic narratives sideline the A-plot in order to focus on a character's emotional arc, and Tobias's unsolvable, accessible inner turmoil has stuck with me almost word for word since I was thirteen and still holds up as an adult reader. A solid 4.5* book, bumped up because it made me have an entire feeling.