A review by ailarum
Amelia, If Only by Becky Albertalli

2.5

So, this was only a 3-star read for me, mainly because it just wasn’t for me and not because the book is ‘bad’ (also 3-stars is not actually a bad rating). I used to love YA contemporary romances, they were what really got me into reading in the first place, my tastes have shifted since then and I’ve not read many YA contemporary books for a while. I’d read other Becky Albertalli books before, so I thought I’d give this one a go and find out if I still liked the genre. Turns out, I do not. I am still very fond of YA sci-fi and fantasy, but contemporary/romances are very much not my thing anymore. This was a slog for me to get through, to be quite honest, even though it was a perfectly fine story. There’s noting objectively wrong with it, and if you do enjoy reading this genre you’ll probably like this book. Subjectively, this book would probably be a 1.5 stars for me, but I don’t really feel comfortable rating it anything under 3 stars, because the book isn’t bad, it’s just absolutely not for me.