Ophelia After All

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While there was so much good here, there were a few newbie bumps. Honestly, if Marie is already writing this good now, it makes me super excited for what it to come. Anyway, one slight issue I had was I felt like the book was a tad off to have taken place in 2022. It doesn’t feel dated per say, but I felt it would have been a better fit if this book’s setting had taken place even just five years ago. I felt like some of the terms and just certain things the main character didn’t know felt off to me. Again, if it was a handful of years ago I would have understood, but teenagers now are so much more knowledgeable about sexuality and gender than my generation ever was. I thought all the rep in this book was great, including all the different types of queer characters and some we don’t get to see in books as much, so I don’t want to take away from that. I just felt like our main character was more clueless than she should have been to have this book take place in 2022. Linds, Zaq, Talia, and Wes. I love all of them!! Especially Wes, his character was such a solace to me. I am so happy to say that, I FOUND MY COMFORT CHARACTERS! Agatha shakes her head while chewing. “They broke up last week.” She swallows. “He got into NYU and she’s staying local, so they called it quits early. She was a mess in ceramics.”

Suffice to say, I’d begun to worry we’d outgrown our betting. With Agatha trading in NorCal for SoCal when she leaves for fashion school in LA in the fall, part of me has taken every fragment of change in our relationship as a sign that she’s going to forget all about me the second she’s surrounded by avant-garde fashionistas whose wardrobes extend past floral print and canvas shoes. But maybe this means she isn’t ready to let go either. I’m loved already, right here, right now. Loved even if I change, even if I’m not the same Ophelia I’ve always been. Loved by people who are willing to try memorizing a song from a Shakespearean play the night before their senior prom in the simple hope that it’ll make me smile, make my not-so-foolish dreams come true.” You’re so full of shit.” He shakes his head at her, then turns to me. “You promised I could be in on the next bet.”Beautifully written, with a lot of charm and loveable characters, who aren't always perfect (and they don't need to be!) and whom I won't forget any time soon, "Ophelia After All" is 100% worth a read if you're a fan of YA contemporaries. But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years and they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before. I don’t just mean subtle, slow changes. I mean, like, the big things that they never saw coming.” Maybe I would’ve if the senior council president was still Vijay Khan from last year,” I say, fanning my face while Agatha rolls her eyes. “Seriously, why couldn’t he have just taken one for the team and been a super senior? He was easily the best president.” Lindsay shoots me a look. “Okay, at the very least he was the most swoonworthy.” So when she finds herself thinking more about cute, quiet Talia Sanchez than the loss of a perfect prom with her ex-boyfriend, seeds of doubt take root in Ophelia’s firm image of herself. Add to that the impending end of high school and the fracturing of her once-solid friend group, and things are spiraling a little out of control. But the course of love—and sexuality—never did run smooth. As her secrets begin to unravel, Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she’s always imagined or upending everyone’s expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.

Starting 2022 with OPHELIA AFTER ALL as one of the best decisions I have made in a long time. This is a coming of age story that follows Cuban-Irish American teenager Ophelia as she goes through her last few months of high school. As this huge chapter of her life comes to an end, she feels like everything is changing. Including herself. And she feels lost and untethered. Follows Ophelia, a biracial Cuban-Irish teen, who has always 'falls in love just a little bit everyday with someone new', or 'boy crazy Ophelia'. But when she starts to realise that she may actually be queer, this quiet revelation will forever change the perceptions of those closest to her. The storytelling is so organic and just so real. I loved Ophelia so much; so many of her thoughts will resonate with readers and the emotional journey that we go on with her is truly splendid and satisfying. Still, I liked that the author didn’t make Ophelia immediately accept her queerness and that her self-denial leads her to make quite a few bad choices. Her treatment of Talia was kind of horrible if you think about it but she owns up to it (which doesn’t cancel out what she did but it results in some solid character growth on her part). I also liked that her mother isn’t depicted as being horrible, which I feared she would be for a good portion of the book. Her talk with Ophelia towards the end was very touching.

I can't wait to read everything Raquel publishes, because if this book is any indication of what her future work will be like, she has the potential top become one of my auto-buy authors. Ophelia, who loves rose-gardening and has always been having a lot of crushes on boys, suddenly has to deal with a new kind of crush - a crush on a girl named Talia. I loved Ophelia's growth throughout the novel. Her journey reminded me a lot of my own experiences, so it was heartwarming to see her embracing herself little by little. Raquel does an exceptional job making her main character reliable while at the same time keeping her realistic. I adore Ophelia's friend group - by the end, I felt like they were my friends too? Racquel has this unique and stunning way of bringing her characters to life.