A review by synth
Queerleaders by M.B. Guel

1.0

In all honesty, I think quite a number of people might like this, it reads entirely like a basic Netflix romcom à la Half of It (but more romantic) or Love, Simon. This was a list of cliché after stereotype, with a main character that reads like a romcom teenage boy.

She is self-centered and selfish, and has both low self-esteem and the compensating cocky arrogance, which all translates to using girls disrespectfully, and as props to her ego, in the name of... I don't even know what, fun or revenge or self-acceptance. Everyone praises her and seems to like her despite her being this awful.

And of course it all ends well with a stupid prom scene where everyone "unionizes" around her,

standing up and saying they're gay so she doesn't get expelled

, while they had no issue laughing at her when she was outed and mocked. And okay it's hard to stand up to your friends and to a whole school on your own, but then we see none of the work necessary for any of them to do that, the only explanation we get is the MC acting impulsively in anger and "just doing her thing" somehow translating into positive action (which includes cockily claiming she'll steal all the cheerleaders from their boyfriends, and no one questions the misogyny of it, and the MC keeps insisting you can't convert anyone to gayness as if she didn't just imply that with her anger-induced self-imposed challenge and as if she doesn't actively try to do so for a big part of the book *eyeroll*).