Awkward Turtles in Leah on the Offbeat || BOOK REVEIW

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

4/5 STARS

Genre: LGBT+, Young Adult, Contemporary
Author: Becky Albertalli
Published: April 2018
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 343 {paperback}

Review on Goodreads

Initial Thoughts Upon Finishing

Yay! Another awesomely enjoyable Albertalli book! I’d been looking forward to reading this for such a long time and I’m pleased to say that it lived up to expectations. Leah was a really interesting character with incredibly high levels of sass and it was such a quick read. I can’t wait to see what other projects Albertalli has brewing for the future!

Leah on the Offbeat

SO this book half follows on from the events of Simon vs in that everything takes place about a year after that book. Leah is our new MC and being set in the same world we see a lot of the same characters that we’re familiar with.

Leah is bisexual and OVERTHINKS EVERYTHING. Seriously, that girl has got to learn to chill. She’s in her final years of high school and getting ready to move to university (or college, whatever) and there is so much internal turmoil going on. None of her friends (including Simon) know that she’s bi and she has the biggest and most inconvenient crushes on one of the girls in her year.

The story is essentially Leah learning to love herself and not be afraid of how she feels. And also everyone telling her to calm the heck down and learn to take life as it comes. It’s funny, it’s beautiful and there’s a sneaky-deaky reference to Adam Silvera in the book (who co-wrote a book with Albertalli that was published after this one).

Why I Liked It

I just love Albertalli’s writing style. In all honesty, I didn’t connect to Leah as much as I’ve connected to her previous characters. I am very, very different to Leah in the way that I handle stress etc and found her occasionally frustrating.

But the story itself and the journey that we go on with Leah is awesome. It’s such a good self-growth story and the characters are just so much fun in this. I don’t know how I feel about Abby really, she was a little bit (a lot) of a lose cannon but DANG, I’m always down for any Simon screen time.

It’s just a good read and has me really excited for anything and everything that Albertalli publishes in the future. She has such an awesome knack for handling LGBT+ fiction in a YA contemporary setting and I love it. Just when you thought contemporary coming of ages stories couldn’t get more mentally draining, Albertalli spices it up with a solid ~~pinch~~ handful of LGBT+ confusion and vibes and it’s AWESOME.

Summary

I would definitely recommend picking this book up if you’ve read her other books. SO STOP PUTTING IT OFF! I’ve really enjoyed reading these in order and I feel like you’ve got to at least read Simon vs first so that you can well and truly fall in love with Simon before you tackle Leah. THUMBS UP.