<blockquote><i>”This is why hope is dangerous: it it’s taken away, you’re left with even less than you had before.”</i></blockquote>At the risk of sounding like the kind of completely negative person I try so hard not to be, <i>Out of the Blue</i> is <b>literally the first new book I’ve read in 2018 that I’ve liked</b>. Seriously. I have no idea what this says about me, but if you take anything away from that statement, it should be that this book is <b>amazing</b>.

First off, let it be known that this book perfectly fulfills my personal aesthetic. gorgeous angels with multi-colored feathers in a rose-gold palette and perfect singing voices?? <b>sapphic girls</b>??? a festival in edinburgh?? old buildings and beautiful art?? and <b>that cover tho</b>?? sign me tf up. That’s some <b>god-tier beauty</b> right there.

The world-building in this book is <b>so cool</b>. All the sudden last December angels just started, like, full up falling from the sky?? They’re all dead when they land, they bleed gold blood, and people take their luminescent feathers from their bodies and sell them for thousands of dollars online. There’s cults revolving around the angels being a sign of the rapture, and they’ve gained a huge following online (called “wingdings”).

The characters in this story are all so well-rounded and awesome. It also includes lots of diversity! I mean, we’ve got a lesbian of color, a bi girl with cystic fibrosis, and so much more, and everyone has such a vibrant personality.

Jaya is our narrator, and the guilt over her mother’s death and the disgust she has for all of the cults and wingdings fuels a lot of her decisions. She sees the angels (or, “beings”) as people, and she doesn’t like that no one else does. All of the friendship, relationship, and family dynamics involving Jaya were so well-written, but I think the most interesting relationship she has is with her dad, who’s one of the wingdings and is the one that forced his daughters to come to Edinburgh with him to try and catch a live Being.

Jaya’s dad’s arc is literally SO SWEET. I cried at the end of this book. Full-on tearing up. There’s a huge stress in here on <b>surrounding yourself with people who love you</b>, and <b>letting go of the past</b>, and it completely wasn’t what I was expecting about a book where angels are falling from the sky.

And while it’s nice that a lot of things were unexpected, but at the same time I feel like the blurb might be just a tad bit misleading?? I thought that the relationship would be between Jaya and the angel, and I also thought that there would be more discovery as to where the angels come from. <spoiler>The fact that we never did learn where the angels come from at the end made me disappointed?? The entire time that’s kind of the entire overlaying mystery, but we didn’t really get any closure in that department.</spoiler> But, make no mistake, even though it wasn’t what I expected, I still loved the plot.

The sibling relationship between Calum and Allie was to die for. It’s complex and nuanced, and I’m really glad that this book also emphasized that <b>people with disabilities are just tryna live their lives. Their disability isn’t their entire person.</b> I’m also really glad that this story didn’t go down the “person with a chronic illness dies at the end” trope, because for a hot second there I thought it was going to, and seeing as how Allie is bi too it also would have bought into the “burying your gays” trope and that would have been,,,, yikes,,, but hey!! it didn’t!! so don’t worry about that if you were worried about it!! it’s all good!

The romance between Jaya and Allie was so incredibly sweet. I wish there had been more chemistry between the two of them, but there was no instalove and it was cute, so I don’t even really care that much?? Honestly my standards are so much lower for f/f romances than they are for m/f, like, tbh,,, as long as it’s not problematic there’s about a 90% chance that I would die for the ship. And I would D I E for this ship. They’re so cute. I love them.

The angel, Teacake, was super awesome and freaking beautiful, as I’ve said before. I really want to see this book made into a movie because, a) gay, and b) YES. HELLO. THE ANGEL, especially after all the wing grafts where she has different color wings ooooohhhh yeah, IS SO BEAUTIFUL.

Also the cult aspect of the story was just as creepy as one would expect. Though I wish it had gone more in depth, and I felt like the whole climax involving the cult was kind of laughably unbelievable <spoiler>(I mean,,, like,, Leah really knew the entire floor plan off the top of her head?? seems a little fake but ok)</spoiler>, it was satisfying, and that’s all that really matters.

The only thing that really <i>specifically</i> annoyed me was the fact that this book seemed to very actively resist the use of they/them pronouns in reference to the beings. I was seriously sitting here like,,, really,,, y’all seriously gotta strictly enforce the whole Western gender binary thing onto creatures who may not even have a concept of gender??? or might have a completely different gender binary?? Like, they call them she or he, and the people who don’t call them that call them “it.” Every time I saw that I was just sitting there like “just say they/them/their.” It was so annoying <blockquote><img src="https://78.media.tumblr.com/0b56db1a0270109f0d0321ec973375d3/tumblr_inline_mmxlxkkwIo1qz4rgp.jpg" width="300" height="200" alt="description"/></blockquote> Here’s an <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/using-they-and-them-in-the-singular">interesting and useful article</a> about why you should use the singular they. It’s more inclusive and less awkward than using “he or she or it.”

But besides that, this was such a gorgeous book! I can’t believe that there aren’t any more Sophie Cameron stories out there, because I fell in love with her writing style in <i>Out of the Blue</i>. I can’t wait to see more books from her in the upcoming years, and I would highly recommend this story for anyone in the mood for a quick, sapphic read with gorgeous backdrops and even more gorgeous angels.