As I tiptoe closer to my 30s I am constantly reminded that I am not a Young Adult.
This isn’t to say The Upside of Unrequited isn’t a wonderful fine YA novel, I’m just old. I just struggle to connect to today’s teen stories although I wish YA had been this diverse when I was an actual young adult.
Also, I had to google to difference between pansexual and bisexual (used in Being Jazz and Upside) which made me feel old and out of touch.
“I mean, here’s the thing I don’t get. How do people come to expect that their crushes will be reciprocated? Like, how does that get to be your default assumption?”
Seventeen year old Molly and her twin sister, Cassie, have always been very close although very different. Cassie is a pretty, confident lesbian with lots of experience while Molly struggles with her weight and has had 26 crushes but never been kissed. Those are their defining character traits- confident lesbian and chubby hopeless romantic.
Molly begins working at a local store over the summer and befriends the owner’s son, Reid. At the same time Cassie starts dating a girl named Mina, who is friends with a boy Cassie decides should be Molly’s next crush, and the girl’s trademark twin closeness begins to unravel. Cassie is a bit of a user and Molly is a bit of a doormat.
“I want to know what it feels like to have crushes that could conceivably maybe one day turn into boyfriends.”
Albertalli seemed to be aiming for an open minded novel, there is a lot of diversity in gender, sexual preferences and race, but overall there is just a lot going on without a lot of substance.
If you don’t know how this one ends before reading it than you clearly don’t read enough YA and this isn’t the one to start with…
To answer the title question: possibly.