Only Mostly Devastated Book Review

---

Only Mostly Devastated is a modern day retelling of Grease. As a musical fan, and a huge fan of romance, I was very excited for this! Will and Ollie have a summer fling, both seem very interested in each other, but when summer ends and Ollie has to move back home, suddenly, Will goes quiet. Trying to contact him but with no avail, Ollie thinks that maybe the worst has happened. And then, his parents inform him, they’ll be moving across the country, and Ollie must rethink his plan when he ends up at the same school as Will. Excited, Ollie thinks this could be the opportunity to work out what happened between them, but then he sees Will and realises, not only is he closeted, but he’s a jock and kind of awful! Focusing instead on school and music, Will then starts taking an interest in Ollie, but refuses to acknowledge what they have in public. So what should Ollie do? Ignore the boy he thought was his happily ever after? Or hand him his heart again and hope that this time it’s not destroyed?

I’m not a huge fan of all young adult fiction, but my kryptonite is YA romance – there’s something so cute and inconsequential, and often it tackles heavier themes than adult fiction (after all mental health struggles, eating disorders and sexuality are often the sort of things we contend with when we’re teenagers.) Only Mostly Devastated is no exception – with a romance at its core, it also dealt with a family member with cancer as well as the causal homophobia Ollie has to deal with from his peers at school. I really loved Ollie as a protagonist and watching him endure and grow from these situations was really heartwarming and empowering to see.

Will on the other hand was harder to love; presumably the author makes him this way. The way their characters juxtapose makes them interesting but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to shake some sense into Will for most of the book! That being said, this book reminded you actually how hard it is being a teenager – I can only imagine how daunting it could be coming to terms with your sexuality, especially if you’ve grown up being shown very heteronormative ideals, so Will definitely had a layered personality. It was also nice to see some of his heritage and the love for his relatives when we got a glimpse at his family at home, again showing he was more than the jock personality he projected at school.

Reminiscent of the T-Birds and Pink Ladies, I liked how Gonzales created two cliques for Ollie and Will to have but in this retelling they’re more complex and vulnerable than in Grease’s 1971 film, and while at their heart the two groups revolved around relationships and couples, each character had other things to deal with too. Whether it was their own sexuality, their future, or their families, Gonzales allows them to be much more 3-dimensional. My only gripe, and this is probably due to the audience its aimed at, was how easily resolved a lot of the conflict was, but as it was a cute romance, I probably shouldn’t complain too much!

Gonzales writing was also fantastic – the tone and humour were perfect and I loved the plethora of modern pop culture references which gave it a familiar John Green-esque feel.

Compared with its film’s counterpart, I think this book will hit the spot more profoundly with a modern audience than Grease would do (unless you already love the film that is!) It’s full of classic YA tropes and teenage drama but with meaningful and sincere messages and morals. As with most YA romance, this would be a cute and heart-wrenching film, so I hope it can make it to the silver screen, and in the meantime, I’m happy to read anything else Gonzales writes!