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A review by booksofastoria
Amelia, If Only by Becky Albertalli
4.0
I adored this!! Despite this only being my second Becky Albertalli book, she writes books that like scratch and itch in my brain in some way. Imogen Obviously did that in too many ways to even list, while Amelia did it in the way that it talked about parasocial relationships and toxic fanbases and how we treat celebrities and people we look up to. And to back it up it has a great friend group with super fun banter and returning characters from Imogen that I was super excited to see again!!
Amelia is like a hot mess honestly but she was a charming hot mess who I liked a lot by the end. Natalie, Zora, and Mark complimented her chaos well and were always getting on board with her wild personality and convo topics. I probably could have worded that a little better but hopefully you get what I mean lol. What I enjoyed most was that in the first half you hear all the things that Walter and Hayden's fanbase said about them, the wild queerbating accusations, the shipping, the arguing over things their fans were treating like facts instead of the invasive assumptions they actually were, etc etc. But later we hear a different perspective on them directly from those affected by them and it really just shows that you never actually KNOW the people you look up to and admire in the spotlight. They aren't objects for you to speculate about and try to invade into their personal business for fun, they are literally just human beings who deserve respect and privacy. The parts where it shows us twitter comments, threads, tweets, and interviews from the Drama clash fandom are all too real because I know I see a lot of the same stuff on my social media every single day. And one specific thing that bothered me about that is that in those parts, it kept being said that both boys were queer, which Walter was, but Hayden was never confirmed to be so it was just added to the list of things their fans had taken as fact when it never really was in the first place. I have probably too much to say on that topic because I have very strong opinions about it so ill keep most of it to myself but basically I just really liked that aspect of it lol.
One thing that didn't quite land for me was Natalie and Amelia's relationship. Like they were cute as friends that I could've gotten on board with as something more completely, but it was such a slowburn that by the time the slowburn actually picks up into something more, we were at the end and it felt rushed and thrown in last minute. So it was cute but it had more potential than it lived up to. But like I said I liked them as individual characters anyways so it's very whatever to me, I get that it wasn't really the main plot of the book either. I also felt like pacing was a little weird and most of the time I didn't know where we were going direction wise which was tough. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy, all opinions have been my own!
Amelia is like a hot mess honestly but she was a charming hot mess who I liked a lot by the end. Natalie, Zora, and Mark complimented her chaos well and were always getting on board with her wild personality and convo topics. I probably could have worded that a little better but hopefully you get what I mean lol. What I enjoyed most was that in the first half you hear all the things that Walter and Hayden's fanbase said about them, the wild queerbating accusations, the shipping, the arguing over things their fans were treating like facts instead of the invasive assumptions they actually were, etc etc. But later we hear a different perspective on them directly from those affected by them and it really just shows that you never actually KNOW the people you look up to and admire in the spotlight. They aren't objects for you to speculate about and try to invade into their personal business for fun, they are literally just human beings who deserve respect and privacy. The parts where it shows us twitter comments, threads, tweets, and interviews from the Drama clash fandom are all too real because I know I see a lot of the same stuff on my social media every single day. And one specific thing that bothered me about that is that in those parts, it kept being said that both boys were queer, which Walter was, but Hayden was never confirmed to be so it was just added to the list of things their fans had taken as fact when it never really was in the first place. I have probably too much to say on that topic because I have very strong opinions about it so ill keep most of it to myself but basically I just really liked that aspect of it lol.
One thing that didn't quite land for me was Natalie and Amelia's relationship. Like they were cute as friends that I could've gotten on board with as something more completely, but it was such a slowburn that by the time the slowburn actually picks up into something more, we were at the end and it felt rushed and thrown in last minute. So it was cute but it had more potential than it lived up to. But like I said I liked them as individual characters anyways so it's very whatever to me, I get that it wasn't really the main plot of the book either. I also felt like pacing was a little weird and most of the time I didn't know where we were going direction wise which was tough. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy, all opinions have been my own!