**I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**

4.5 stars

Queens of Geek features three main characters: Charlie, Taylor, and Jamie. Charlie is a breakout actress who is attending SupaCon, a fandom convention, for publicity for her new movie. She is also dealing with drama with her costar after their well publicized breakup due to him cheating on her. Taylor and Jamie go with her as a graduation trip; at SupaCon, Taylor wants to see the author of her favorite series and decides to enter a contest despite her anxiety. At SupaCon, Charlie meets her crush, another famous female vlogger, and Taylor deals with her feelings for Jamie.

The thing I enjoyed most about this book was the diversity: Charlie is a publicly out bisexual Chinese actress, Taylor is on the autistic spectrum, and Jamie is latinx. All of these things are clearly stated; there is no inferring. For example, Charlie speaks about her Chinese heritage many times, like how her parents are immigrants and how she's not ashamed of them. She also talks about how she realized she was bisexual and how, just because she had never really flirted with a girl, her sexuality never changed. One of my favorite scenes was her telling her boyfriend that she was bisexual after he said bisexuality wasn't a real thing:

"What do you mean you don't believe in bisexuals? They're not mythical creatures," I [Taylor] said. "They're real people, just like you."
He squirmed uncomfortably, and Charlie sighed. "Reese, I'm bisexual. Do you believe in me?"
He sat up and stared at her like he was suddenly seeing a whole different person. "You? But you're with me."
"So? I'm still bi."


Despite our society's increasingly progressive attitude, there are still many people who believe that being bisexual is "just a phase" or that once the bi person settles down, they'll switch sexualities. It was really refreshing for Queens of Geek to explicitly state that, even though a bi person is with someone of their opposite gender, they are still bi. After this came one of my favorite scenes in the book:

When Reese finally said something, I wished he hadn't. "But how could you possibly know you're bi? Have you ever been with a girl?"
I remember seeing frustration written all over Charlie's face, and I spoke up. "How did you know you were straight before you were with a girl, Reese?"


I honestly almost started cheering when I read this! Taylor, despite her high anxiety (more on this later), stood up for her friend and delivered the perfect response. Heterosexuality is so commonly perceived as the "default" sexuality that people refuse to believe you identify as something else without dating someone of your own gender/in between. Another thing I love is that Charlie meets her crush, Alyssa, and (view spoiler)

Anyway, as I mentioned before, Taylor is on the autism spectrum and has high anxiety. Of course, being at an extremely packed convention should be horrible for her, but she stays strong with the help of Jamie and Charlie. She is also plus-sized, which causes more self-consciousness for her, as she doesn't think she is pretty. Both Taylor and Jamie are obsessed with fandom, causing their strong friendship and (view spoiler) Protagonists who are plus-sized, on the autism spectrum, or have anxiety are exceedingly rare, but here Jen Wilde gives us all of these in one character. And not only this, but she also gets a romance!

Although the book deals with fandom issues and the like (which I don't care for because it reminds me of my own superwholock days), I think Queens of Geek dealt with all of the healthy aspects, like how Taylor uses her love for fandom as a safe space for when she gets too overwhelmed. Fandoms can be highly toxic nowadays, but this book portrays the good side of it, the side of it that I was attracted to so long ago.

Queens of Geek was a fun, cute read with so much diversity! Bi Chinese character and a wlw relationship, and a plus-sized, autistic character who has a romance too! I enjoyed this book so much, and I hope all of you read it, especially because it has so many things we need to see in the world today.

This book…I can’t even begin to explain the emotions that this book has caused in me. I loved it. I literally flew through this book in a matter of hours and the further and further I got in it the more and more invested I became in these characters. Both Charlie and Taylors stories had me captivated from the beginning. I loved that I could relate to both of them in some aspect, be it love of all things nerdy or defending how bisexuality is a real thing to someone that just doesn’t understand it. I feel like this book was written with me in mind and it kind of was, not me specifically but people like me. The used phrases every fangirl or boy would know like OTP and ship names, they even mentioned Destiel for crying out loud. We only follow these characters for a weekend but through reflections and their personalities I felt like I knew them for much longer. The last couple of chapters had me reading the book with a huge goofy grin on my face and I literally said, “Awwww” at a couple of parts. And Taylor’s last chapter had me tearing up, granted I’m a pretty easy crier but I was just so proud of her. And if you can make me feel actual pride for a fictional character then I say you’re doing a great job.

I give this book a 5 out of 5 stars.

Will update with links to where I posted my review online closer to the release date. (Final review might change slightly but will have the same basic message).

I find that many YA novels dealing with "nerdy" subjects tend to be written with an extra cheese factor, much like high school spirit days when popular kids wore super thick fake frames to pretend to be nerds. Unfortunately, this falls into that category. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I hope others like it more than I did.

If you have ever attended a con (or wanted to), shipped in a fandom, or called yourself a geek, then this book is for you. It is chock full of pop culture references, which have the potential to date this novel, but for the moment it is a good bet. There are two romances in the story f/m and f/f, but the main parts of the story are about learning to accept yourself the way that you are, Asperger-anxiety and all. The novel alternates points of view with the two main bff characters, one who has serious social anxiety and the other who is a up-and-coming vlogger-turned-movie-star. This means that your geek girl reader is likely to either identify with or aspire to at least one of the characters.