"Only Mostly Devastated" is a YA romance novel inspired by "Grease." Its narrator, Ollie, and his family, move to North Carolina to take care of his aunt with a terminal illness. Soon, Ollie realizes that Will, his summer love who has been dodging his calls and texts and Snaps, attends his new school. Will is also not out of the closet. The whole situation makes Ollie feel "only mostly devastated."

I found Ollie's fixation with Will to border on annoying, which made Ollie all the more believable. I really felt for Ollie throughout the book, especially because there were so many will they/won't they moments with Will, who struggled with coming out.

I loved the depictions of friendship in this book--so much so that my favorite relationship in the book wasn't between Will and Ollie, but between Ollie and his frenemy Lara, who, like Ollie and Will, had some self-reflection and growing up to do. I also loved how this book tackled issues related to fat-/bi-/homophobia in a mostly realistic manner.

Overall, I think my 8th graders would like this book and root for Ollie, Will, and their friends.

*I received a free ARC of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

This was a cute romance novel. I never really felt for the main character so this just felt like another slight romance novel.. It was definitely entertaining and it did succeed in making me cry

This book is a literary hit and I'm loving it! You can hit that replay button on this because it is going to stick with you!
The storyline is really good, the writing style is very fluid and there is a tsunami of emotion here! Loved it!

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for a review!

It’s time to admit something to you : I’ve never watched grease, ever.

So when this book was described as “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets Clueless, inspired by Grease.”, as someone who hasn’t read or watched any of those references, I wasn’t expecting anything from it, because – well, because I just didn’t know what to expect. And I think that actually helped me enjoy this book more than some other reviewers who tended to compare it a lot to those references.

Fair warning : the next paragraphs have some spoilers.

For a YA romance novel, I thought this book tackled some heavy themes, and it hit me pretty hard. For example – Ollie has to stay in that new city to help a sick relative, and the themes of illness and grief are talked about in detail in a few chapters. This hit really close to home for me : this past year, one of my closest friends passed away after a long illness – the very same one that affects Ollie’s relative in the book, and a few months later, I lost my grandfather of sudden illness.

The character’s feelings and expressions of emotion in the book resonated with me a lot, and I had to take a few breaks at some points. This quote, specifically, felt so real to me that I had to stop and cry for some time before I could start again.

"I lost it in the hallway. I pressed my back against the wall and sank to the floor, crying as quietly as I could. I didn’t want to be here in this house knowing [character name] would never be in it again. It was her house. We came here when we visited her. It’d been her house my whole life. This wasn’t right. None of it was right."

That quote echoes exactly my own feelings about grief, and about my personal losses, and I thought the author had managed an extremely just portrayal of what you can go through in that kind of situation.

The themes of fat-shaming and homophobia were also talked about in this book, and I really appreciated it.
However, I felt like some of the character’s relationships could have been developed a bit more – like Lara and Ollie, and Will and his friends. I also had some trouble getting over my initial dislike of Will on behalf of Ollie, even when the main character himself started getting over it.

Overall, this was a good book for me. I really liked reading it, even if it wasn’t as lighthearted and fun as I expected it to be, based on the cover and the description. I’d still recommend it to readers of YA contemporary books without hesitation !

This was a really cute read. The writing was easy to follow along with and I managed to finish it in one night. I enjoyed the character development, especially Lara.

I don’t usually enjoy books with second-hand embarrassment but I wasn’t really bothered, in fact, I really connected with Oliver.

Overall, super enjoyable.

The review will be published on the publication day. The review is going to be a four star review.

Schöner m/m Jugendroman

"Only mostly devastated" spielt mit der Idee, dass je nach Umgebung und Kontext in der / dem wir uns befinden, wir nicht immer wir selbst sind, sondern teils eine Rolle einnehmen. Oder zumindest bestimmte Eigenschaften von uns zurückdrängen bzw. betonen.

Was passiert, wenn die Sommeromanze, die keine Zukunft hatte, auf einmal doch eine zweite Chance bekommt? Man die andere Person aber teils nicht wiedererkennt, da sie sich ganz anders als gewohnt verhält? Genau damit wird Ollie konfrontiert, nachdem er mit seiner Familie umziehen muss und plötzlich wieder auf Will trifft, den er im Sommer kennengelernt hat.

Die Autorin hat einen sehr schönen Jugendroman geschrieben, der mich nicht nur emotional berührt hat, sondern mich dabei auch noch gut unterhalten konnte. Sie hat sowohl die Geschichte als auch die Charaktere mit viel Liebe geschrieben, zumindest hat sich das für mich so angefühlt.

Beworben wird das Buch wie folgt: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda meets Clueless, inspired by Grease. Die Mischung mag sich etwas wild anhören und erschien mir teils etwas weit hergeholt. Aber es stimmt schon, Elemente der erwähnten Bücher / Filme finden sich im Buch wieder und die Autorin hat es geschafft daraus eine in sich stimmige Geschichte zu stricken, die mir gut gefallen hat, wenn ihr auch noch das gewisse Extra fehlt, um zu meinen Lieblingsbüchern zu gehören.

Ich gebe dem Buch 4 Sterne.

This book was cute, well written and Ollie was a joy to read. While I enjoyed the book, I was not particularly consumed by it.. Still, I thought it was good. There was romance and drama and all the elements I expect from a good YA novel.

I didn't know how much I needed a queer Grease retelling until I read this beauty of a book. This book is just perfect and incredible and amazing and you will absolutely fall head over heels in love with Ollie's voice. He is hilarious and so great.

When Ollie's aunt falls sick with cancer, his family moves closer to her for the summer to help take care of her. While there, Ollie meets Will and the two of them have a beautiful, sweet summer romance, thinking they might never see each other again when Ollie has to leave at the end of summer.

But at the end of summer, Ollie's parents tell him they're going to stay to be there for his aunt. Ollie, unable to get a response from Will when he tries to tell him he'll be sticking around, finds himself at the same school as Will, where Will hasn't yet come out. Will, afraid to be outed, pretends not to know Ollie.

But eventually they come back together, hiding their relationship from everyone, but falling in love all over again. They are the cutest and I absolutely loved their story, and though there were times when I got annoyed with Will for hurting Ollie with his lies, I feel for his fear of how people would react. And by the end, Ollie realizes that there are things he was expecting from Will that he wasn't giving back and I really loved the growth in their relationship and how they found each other again and how cute and perfect they were together.

And the side characters are amaaaazing and diverse and adorable and I loved them all to no end, they bring so much to the story and I love the girls who take Ollie into their group. I just adored everything about this book and I can't possibly recommend it enough <3

This was such a sweet book. I mean, yes, there was drama and things that made you think. But it was mainly just a sweet retelling of Grease with one gay teen, two bi teens, some people of color, and an aunt dying of cancer. I enjoyed that Aunt Linda was in there to help ground Ollie's life outside of school in a way I'm not sure much else could have.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Sophie Gonzales for giving me a free review copy of this amazing book.

I'm not quite sure where to start except that I love this book and these characters and you should definitely read it. I knew right away while reading that I would fall in love with this one. There's an incredible level of detail and understanding that I haven't really seen elsewhere.

Ollie's inner monologue is so great - it's so much like my own. There's a lot of comedy that comes through that as well. The gay rep and commentary is really interesting - I loved his description of coming out again and how it differed in the small town vs California. I know the author put TWs in a comment on the Goodreads page - related to that, it's really nice that even though some characters said things that were homophobic, biphobic, or fatphobic, it was always called out - even if just in Ollie's inner monologue. That is so important for readers and I'm really glad the author did that.

I was really excited and pleasantly surprised with the bi rep in this one. They actually said the word bisexual and didn't just dance around the concept. [potential spoiler alert] They even gave us an amazing bi queen with her iced coffee (talk about getting details right!)

[another potential spoiler in this paragraph]
This author clearly has been through immense grief. The way she captured it is all too real. She’s captured perfectly the feeling of your first deep loss as a kid/young person. When Ollie is thinking about all of the things his Aunt Linda will never experience it made me think of my own young bereaved self. When my dad died I thought about how he’d never get to read the last Harry Potter book. The depiction of grief was completely heartbreaking and entirely accurate on how it affects children and each person differently. Devastating. I couldn't stop crying for the last quarter of the book.

I know this was written about loss, but it really nails depression as well.
“Conversation just seemed to take up so much energy. Energy I didn’t have.”
“Even though I’d made it through, the effort of being okay and engaged all morning had been more exhausting than I’d realized.”

One of the things that stuck out to me was the attention to detail throughout this book. The author clearly not only understands all of these things, but is able to articulate them in an amazingly relatable way. I'm not sure I've read a book that really got it as much as this one. A close contender would be Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston though. If you liked this one, I'd also highly recommend RWRB.

"There were worse things that could happen than being a little embarrassed. And life was too short to play chicken with something as important as the person you loved."

Other things I wanted to mention: They talked about PCOS and *actually* talked about it in a real way and then referenced it later which was great. The MC doesn't drink and people didn't make that big of a deal about it which was nice.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book and will most likely have to buy a copy when it comes out in March 2020. I look forward to reading more by this author.

What a charming book!

While Ollie and his parents are visiting his sick aunt in NC, Ollie meets a great guy named Will, and the two of them have a summer fling. They think they’ll never see each other again - which comes as a relief to Will as he’s not out to anyone. However, as Ollie’s aunt gets sicker, his parents decide to stay in NC permanently - setting up the push and pull relationship between Ollie and Will. Will clearly likes Ollie but isn’t ready to be out. Ollie, being a somewhat typical teenager, doesn’t understand why Will must deny his feelings to everyone in public. While Ollie is trying to navigate his complicated relationship with Will, he is also trying to adjust to life in a brand new place, figure out new friendships, and learn how to cope with his very sick aunt.

I really liked the dynamic Ollie had with his aunt, and the great advice she gave him that helped open his eyes to how Will may be feeling about coming out. I also loved the fact that no one is a “villain” in Ollie’s and Will’s relationship; neither of the boys is in the wrong while they’re trying to navigate how they feel and if they can be together 100%.

Only Mostly Devastated is a heartwarming and heartbreaking story about friends, family, and love that all teens will enjoy diving into.

(Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Wednesday Books for a digital ARC of this book.)

“Here walks Ollie DeFiore. Master of his feelings, expert detacher, only mostly devastated. “

SO I’ve never seen Clueless, though supposedly this is like that, but I have seen most of Grease and this is definitely like that, except better and gayer, better because it is gayer. What this does, is take a story people already know and love and adds layers of humor and complexity onto the story making it even more fun and layered.

So you’ve got Ollie, who’s first of all, adorable. He’s also really funny, loyal, and a good friend. He’s also no where near perfect and I thought that was probably the best thing about him. Even though, he was not this character i could just adore and love, he felt more like a real person, someone you could get frustrated with and have to work through and at the end of the day, still love him.

Will was very similar in that he could be a real jerk. In some of their fights, I didn’t agree completely with either one of them. That felt awesome to me because it just showed that the book really understands tensions within the lgbtqia community. The book was also really able to demonstrate that it understands the contemporary lgbt experience. There’s more and more people who aren’t deathly afraid of coming out and those who are have reasons that go way beyond the fear of being discriminated against.

I loved that the book included more LGBT characters than just Ollie and Will because that’s more realistic than the alternative. And you also get to see a variety of experiences within one book. I think it’s really important to show how LGBT people are with each other in platonic relationships because it’s not something I see all the time.

The book also did a really awesome job of showing how important ally-ship is. The positive effects that it has on the entire community and why ally-ship isn’t just this title you have. It’s a way to behave, a way to support without saying “I support you”. It’s demonstrative and it’s crucial to show out loud even when you think there aren’t any queer people around you.

As much as this book teaches, it also is a lot of fun. This book was funny and had lots of great moments. It also did have moments of drag where I was thinking “this is cute and all, but what’s the purpose of it?”. Not that I’m complaining about frivolous fun, but I felt like maybe somethings weren’t totally necessary. But nevertheless, it was a lot of fun to read and really easy to get through.

And also, this book was also pretty darn romantic. Like- really adorably romantic. I was obviously was rooting for Ollie and Will the whole time, even when they made it hard. But when they had their moments, they were really good! It was really awesome to see these characters that were unique and didn’t feel like I’ve heard this story a million times.

TL;DR: The aesthetic of this book was able to give off Grease high school vibes, but fill that space with its own authenticity and flair. The book is very funny, romantic, and incredibly poignant, like a balm for the scars your high school experience left you.

*Thank you St. Martin's Press for this arc via Netgalley.

3.75 / 5 stars

Only Mostly Devastated follows Ollie as he moves to a new place so that his family can help care for his ill aunt. Ollie thinks he has found his dream guy over the summer, but his perspective soon changes when he realizes that Will is a different person back at school. Ollie knows that he does not want to be associated with the new version of Will that he meets, but Will keeps trying to be around Ollie as he shows glimpses of who he was over the summer.


I enjoyed these characters quite a bit. I love how this book emphasizes support and respect within friendship. I loved the friend group that Ollie made at his new school. I also appreciated seeing different changes and growth for all of the characters. A good book shows growth and change for minor characters as well when possible.


I felt like the story was very well-written and enjoyable. The book was interesting and fun to read. I feel like this would be a good back to school book, or summer read. I would not quite say that this is a “Grease” retelling though. I just do not fully see a parallel between the two.

I am newly a lover of gay male fiction written by women. In Only Mostly Devastated, Ollie has a summer fling with closeted Will Tavares, but then Ollie's family decides to stay in North Carolina to take care of his cancer-stricken Aunt Linda and her family that includes two little kids. It turns out that Will goes to Ollie's new school and isn't as thrilled to see Ollie as Ollie is to see Will.

Ollie is quickly befriended by a trio of girls and becomes part of their group. They know he's gay and are comfortable with that. A little too comfortable, maybe.

What was it with girls and boundaries when it came to guys they knew were gay?

He wonders when the girls don't seem to mind being unclad in front of him.

I know it's fiction and all, but it's neat to read how women perceive the differences in how men and women are in relationships. I appreciate that Ollie is much better at sticking up for himself and not settling for crumbs than most ciswomen are.

He touched my arm. Even though it made me shiver, and my blood heat up by several degrees, and my stomach kick up, I yanked away. The anger was well and truly back, and it wasn't any of my body's romance bullshit.

At least at first...

...it was getting easier to adjust to the idea of going at his pace. I didn't have the energy to resist his endless olive branches. Even if they resembled olive twigs more than branches, sometimes. Plus, it felt so much better to let him melt me than to fight to stay frozen.

He knows the power dynamic is bs and doesn't question if he's the one at fault!

It's a fun, sweet read. Ollie is probably too good to be true, but Will and the rest of the characters are flawed and believable.

Such a fun quick read. You really feel for Ollie and it has those great nostalgia vibes that I love in a book. Great plot, great characters. Definitely Will be recommending this one.

I was immediately sold once I heard this was essentially a queer modern update on Grease - minus the random bursts of songs. This book wasn't just a gimmick though, it was a really well done queer coming of age romance with a helping of struggling with grief. I found the characters to be very realistic and relatable. There are a few characters who struggle with their sexuality and coming out to friends and family. Ollie is a great narrator, he's funny and very heartfelt. And while there were times that I found Will to be very problematic that in itself made the story a much more realistic portrayal of teenage life.

Only mostly devastated at once makes you think of grease. As a grease modern retelling it has all the elements of the movie but it has its coming of age twist which you would expect from a non straight romance novel. The characters are all very likeable, well at times you do get annoyed at Will but by the end you are probably rooting for him and Ollie to go out flying in a magic levitating car.
Ollie's family story is a perfect add to this story, its sad, painful, tears will get involved but its also slightly so truthful and honest that you can't help but feel this was just the thing needed to make this story an instant hit.
I absolutely loved this story, I can't wait until its released so I can buy a copy.

Thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Only Mostly Devastated follows Ollie, a teenage boy who, after a summer fling with Will in North Carolina, finds out that his family is staying in NC instead of returning to California. It's very Grease but gay. I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it follows some tropes, but it flips them around and gives you new perspectives. It also features a lot of bi rep, which I loved, and featured discussions about gaslighting, fatphobia, PCOS, and grief that I haven't seen that often. I'm so glad that my wish for this book was granted because it was a highlight of the month for me.

I'll be on the look out for Sophie Gonzales' other work.

2.5 Stars. This book is cute. A bit too glaringly young adult for me, but cute nonetheless. I liked the characters. Ollie's inner dialogue grated on me a bit.

A story about two boys who spend the summer falling in love only to have to say goodbye.. But wait.. Ollie shows up as the new student at Will's school, where will is NOT out of the closet.

This book was done so well.
At the beginning of the book, I was a little worried because the Grease storyline was screaming at me a little too loudly. However, this story quickly found its way and became one of my favorites of the year and possibly of all time.
The friendship aspects of this book are absolutely amazing; I loved seeing them blossom from Ollie's first day at his new school forward. The relationships are complex and flawed and fantastically entertaining to read about. The character growth from the beginning to the end is just amazing; everyone is working through their own journey and blocks and everyone's path makes sense and feels natural.
Also the topical discussions of this book on the closet and grief and friendship all threaded together so nicely and were talked about with humor and beauty and a little bit of wonder.
I honestly can't recommend this book enough, and I can't wait to read it again.