A review by billykaplan
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

i’ve heard so many great things about this book and about how it’s a great queer coming of age romance story which is probably my favorite type of book, so i was expecting to be, like, absolutely blown away by this book but i just… wasn’t. it was good. it was really good.  but it didn’t blow my mind in the way i wanted it to which really frustrated me a lot while i was reading this.

i went into this expecting it to be an epic queer romance and it was.. but that wasn’t really the main storyline. it was mostly focused around ari discovering his identity and his family, and i feel like the whole book i was sitting there waiting for ari/dante to become romantic and then it just… didn’t. nothing explicitly queer happens until like halfway thru the book and ari’s friendship with dante didn’t start to turn romantic until very late in the book (like, they literally get together in the last, like, 6 pages). so i guess that was kinda disappointing bc i went into this expecting romance and fireworks and awkward teenage love confessions and there were bits of that but not much. but, to be fair, i can’t really hold that against the book itself because all of that has more to do with my expectations than the actual content of the book. AND those last 6 pages where they do finally get together felt so rewarding and made me scream into my pillow a little bit. so.

it did feel a little slow at parts (especially the middle section where dante is absent). “i thought of my dad and my brother and dante.” i think that line sums up this book pretty well because, well, like 75% of this book is just ari thinking abt stuff. there isn’t really a lot happening. and yeah, a lot of good and insightful and heart wrenching reflections happen, but a lot of it feels like the same stuff over and over with little development. it’s just “why won’t my dad Actually talk to me. why won’t anyone tell me anything about my brother i wish i knew my brother. why does dante hang out with me hes my only friend i like him but i actually hate him i miss him but i don’t yadda yadda yadda” for most of the book. but it did pick up a lot in the last quarter-ish of the book. and i really liked watching ari slowly become more and more sure of himself and who he is and become more comfortable expressing his emotions.

i liked ari and dante but i wouldn’t really say i loved them. some of the things they did (like ari refusing to tell anyone how he actually feels about anything and that masturbation letter and the weird kiss scene where dante kinda pressures ari into kissing him?) rlly made me frustrated with them. but they were really well-written and nuanced characters and they had a ton of good character development throughout the book. i really wish this had explored ari/dante’s mexican-american heritage more tho. yes, it was brought up fairly frequently but i feel like it wasn’t given the full in-depth exploration that it deserved.

i feel like this was close enough to being really great that if just one aspect of it was better—whether it be better writing, better pacing, more romance, more interesting/fleshed out side characters, or a deeper dive into any of the themes of identity/family/communication/sexuality/processing emotions—i wouldve really liked it. all it would’ve taken is a nudge in any of those areas to push it to a 5 star book in my mind.

ANYWAYS with all of that being said, i understand why so many people love this book and if you want to read it i really encourage you to. for some reason when i sat down to write this review all i could think about was the negative stuff but there were still a lot of good parts and i was absolutely in love with it for the first half. so go read it if it interests you!!! 

i will absolutely be tuning in for the sequel in a few months! i am super excited bc it will probably focus more on the romantic side of ari/dante’s relationship and the lack thereof was one of the bigger disappointments about the first book so i think i will probably like the sequel more
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