This book is definitely my favourite read of the year so far and I am SO excited to share my review today, a week before it’s book birthday!! I was absolutely sold by the premise and then it went above and beyond my expectations. 

I went into this book thinking it would probably be pretty funny and it certainly didn’t disappoint, but I was surprised at how the humorous parts were then mixed in so craftily with powerful, moving scenes. This book was an exploration of so many aspects of teenage life: loss, sexuality, love, parental relationships, and academic life. I read this book so fast that I was really sad when it was over. Phoebe had such a vibrant voice on the page and I adored the way her diary entries were written. I’ve always loved books written in a diary format and this one really did it justice. The plot never felt slow despite this style and it was just so bingeable!! The witty commentary? So cute! The kittens? Even cuter! The romance? The cutest thing of all!! 

I don’t know if that paragraph was too ranty, but the bottom line is: This author totally won me over with Phoebe's heartwarming and relatable story and I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a sweet, fun contemporary novel!

LOVE IS FOR LOSERS is pretty cute, if a bit slow-paced for my taste. While the book itself takes place over the course of seven months, there isn't a lot of actual events happening. However, a romantic journey is a journey nonetheless, and I enjoyed seeing the romantic development of Phoebe as she goes through life.

After a bit of a slow start, I quite enjoyed this! There's something of a throwback sensibility to the style, reminiscent of Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging or The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, although it doesn't feel dated overall (I still might have advised doing away with the hashtags heading up each entry). Phoebe manages to be anxious, awkward, and grumpy while also being quite a winning character, and the cast around her is well-defined and nicely balanced. I did feel that the end was a bit abrupt and there were certain plotlines that felt a little unresolved (Phoebe's interest in connecting with her father's parents, and her relationship with her mother - not to mention her mother's relationship with her own mental health), plus the romance is definitely more about the build than the arrival, but overall it was sweet with just the right amount of profundity.

There is so much to love about this book. It targets the YA audience perfectly, especially a much under-represented audience. We need more books that represent the LGBTQ+ audience. I love that the main character actually sounded like a teenager vs a teenager pretending to be an adult. The diary format is fun and will capture the attention of the target audience. This book tackles real-life situations, has a character who is relatable, even when not likable, and is witty, sarcastic, and real all at the same time.

This was adorable! I'll be honest - I have struggled finding a YA f/f romance that I'm into, but this really hit the spot for me. It was a slow burn sweet romance as this witty girl questions her sexuality. Maybe "questions her sexuality" isn't the right description. It's more like she doesn't want anything to do with love as a concept and then realizes she's falling right into it and didn't realize she would be attracted to another girl. Honestly, it felt real to me. Plus, Phoebe's voice sounds the way I think *I* sound in my head so it was easy to read her entries and picture her as a real person.

Some other good stuff in here - a nontraditional family (Phoebe's mother is absent due to working with refugees and Kate steps in as her mother), a found family (the whole thrift store family is a hoot), frank conversations about sex, two teenage girls trying to figure out their friendship when one gets a boyfriend, a character with Down syndrome who I honestly forgot had Down syndrome because he was just part of the thrift store family, dealing with grief over a lost parent, a lost brother, and a lost wife, and the overall British humor of the whole book.

This was a gem and I had such a good time reading it. It's a book club pick for a little later in the year and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everyone is on the same page as me!

“PPS: I think I’m socially awkward.”
^I feel this on a deeper level.

Love is for Losers is a coming of age and learning that maybe a little bit about love. Phoebe is 15 and dealing with losing her best friend to new love, her absent (for a good cause) mother, feeling lonely, and new feelings for a new friend. She finds friendships, life lessons, and refuge in her godmother’s thrift shop, a place she originally felt disdain for.

I think this story is good because while Phoebe is a bit crass at times, she’s also relatable. She’s 15, she’s learning, she’s changing, she’s growing. I remember those days, and I know I was a little bit of a turd. Dealing with feelings, family, friendships, school, and sex. It’s all so much. I think it’s nice to read a character who doesn’t start out perfect. Some of the things she says are on the cusp of problematic, but she’s very self involved at first. How things are changing her life and how it’s ruining what she wants and needs. That leaves room for her to grow and have some realizations that are important in this read.

She has a found family with the people who work at the thrift shop she volunteers at, and budding feelings for her new friend Emma. She’s dealing with the fact that her mom chooses to save the world over being with her daughter, and just general teenage things. I enjoyed the diary style format of this read, because I think it really allows you to get into Phoebe’s mindset quickly.

All in all this is a good YA read. There’s coming of age and falling in love. Perfect if you enjoy a lead character who has to make mistakes and grow.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for this eARC of Love is for Losers.
All opinions are my own.

DNF
Starting this book I really thought I would like it, but the further I read the more I began to dislike it. The writing is very immature, and the main character is whiney to the point of being annoying.
Maybe when I was younger I would have related to Phoebe more.
This just wasn't the book for me.

Love is for Losers is excellent YA. Our heroine is complex and grouchy and yet loveable. She fights her emotions and the idiocy of people in love, but has to learn how to appreciate the value of feeling something. It's about grief, love, found family, growing up, and cats. Sweet, quick, impactful story.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to taste strawberry now without thinking of Emma and remembering the smell of hot concrete, the sounds of a Saturday, and the blue in Emma’s eyes forever changing with the angle of the afternoon sunshine.”

While I was interested in this book, obviously enough that I would request it on net galley, I wasn’t expecting anything life-changing or mind-blowing. I was expecting a fun read, maybe something silly to pass the time. It definitely fulfilled on those expectations, so don’t worry about that. This is a FUN and FUNNY read.

What I wasn’t expecting were quotes that lanced themselves like arrows into my chest, like:

“I want to know what happened after Romeo and Juliet died. I want to know what happened to the Nurse, and to the parents, and to all the shit-stirrers who caused Romeo and Juliet to go crazy.
But nobody ever talks about the time after the great tragedy.”

This book was somehow both beautiful and simple. The writing reminds me of if you added the simplicity of Ari and Dante with the journal-writing in Perks of Being a Wallflower with the laugh out loud humor of a Talia Hibbert novel.

Phoebe Davis is a fifteen year old who does not like feelings. Her mom is constantly away on humanitarian trips (highly dangerous ones, mind you!), her dad died on one of the aforementioned trips, and she lives with her godmother Kate– aka probably my favorite character in the book. Her life is turned upside down when her best friend Polly gets a boyfriend, and she’s forced to reckon with the fact that she has no other friends.

The heart of this book is real teen problems. Googling everything you’re unsure about, not understanding how feelings work, all that jazz. Phoebe is deeply flawed, but you’re in her head, so you can’t help but want her to succeed. I think the fun of this book comes from the dissonance between what Phoebe is writing versus what she is doing/feeling. It’s an unreliable narrator but in the way that we lie to ourselves in our diaries, and that’s really fun.

All of the relationships in this book are quirky and sweet, and I personally ended up rooting for all of them. Every character is fleshed out completely, and that’s what makes it so rewarding. It reminds me of Fredrik Backman- all the characters are individual and have their own quirks and issues. It’s one of those stories that’s so weird it’s realistic.

My one critique would be about some of the side plots. They introduce a lot of things that Phoebe is considering or dealing with, and those issues (like the idea of her father and her father’s family) don’t get as neatly resolved at the end. Though, in my opinion, that worked for the book, because it resembled the messy nature of life, and how sometimes, you don’t have all the answers. Phoebe ends the book not with her life wrapped in a neat little bow, but profoundly grateful for the world around her. She’s ready to live her life and appreciate the people in it. You can tell she’s not going to stop making horrible decisions, but she’s going to be able to bounce back from her mistakes.

This book was a bright spot in my anxious daily life. I would recommend this to fifteen year old girls struggling to come to terms with who they are, or just to anyone who needs some renewed faith in love and life. I’m incredibly impressed and will be very excited to recommend this to my younger sister when she’s old enough for it.

This had F/F romance, which is important and needed particularly in the YA genre. I didn't particularly enjoy the diary format and I couldn't really connect with the story or Phoebe, but I'm sure others will. She is super angsty, but I believe that's typical and was realistically portrayed for a fifteen year old.

I wish I had seen more character growth from her, but again it's typical for 15/16 year olds to not mature or learn lessons very quickly. The teen years are challenging and it can take a bit to learn important lessons.

Overall is was a quick, easy read and classically YA.

Love is for Losers is formatted like a diary. Fifteen year old Phoebe is extremely upset that her best friend, Polly, has gotten a boyfriend. And, of course, all Polly can talk about is Tristian this and Tristian that, completely ignoring Phoebe and not even wishing her a happy new year. While Phoebe obsesses about this, her mother has huge news: she’s leaving for six months to be a doctor in a war zone.

Phoebe goes to live with her godmother, Kate, and ends up volunteering at Kate’s charity thrift. There, she meets Emma and she immediately becomes obsessed: stalking her on Instagram and trying to learn more about her. By stalking her, not by actually having a conversation.

Not only is she having a crisis regarding her mother, regarding her possible feelings for Emma, regarding her best friend Polly completely abandoning her for a boy, she’s also freaking out about GCSE’s, which are coming up fast.

I really like the diary entry style formatting. It reminds me of The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. It’s a very flawed view of the world because, of course, Phoebe is fifteen. She’s an idiot who knows nothing about anything even if she’s very smart in general. She’s asocial and doesn’t like people and she obviously has issues with her mother, who has been heading off to warzones Phoebe’s entire life. They’re not close and Phoebe always feels abandoned by her, even if she does love living with Kate when her mom is out of town. It’s stressful as hell knowing that your mom is constantly in danger and could be dead. Phoebe has a hard time with these feelings, trying to distance herself from them and telling herself and others that it doesn’t matter, that she doesn’t care.

She’s very relatable, thinking feelings are so inconvenient. It’s not that she doesn't have feelings, it’s that she doesn’t want them. There are so many more important things to be worrying about. Phoebe is also very flawed. She’s such an asshole to so many people, including her friends, Kate, and the customers at the shop. It’s kind of hilarious, honestly. Especially considering that these are diary entries and it seems like Phoebe is being fairly honest about how things happen.

It’s so frustrating, yet completely believable, how Phoebe interacts with Emma. She’s afraid to find real answers to her questions, to get to know Emma better because she’s immediately obsessed with her and sees her as unreachable and way too cool to bother with Phoebe. She’s painfully awkward all the time but she seems pretty comfortable with herself.

I hate people like Polly, who become so obsessed with their boyfriends that no one else matters. Phoebe didn’t handle it very well but what was she supposed to do? Hang around waiting for Polly to remember she existed?

I really enjoyed the characters, especially Phoebe, of course. She’s so flawed and weird, and also kind of annoying, for most of the book. But she’s human and she has thoughts and feelings that often aren’t talked about or are considered bad. She does have some problematic things to say but she is fifteen and is quite sheltered, considering. She had a few personal revelations that showed growth and change, overall. And she kind of came to terms with her feelings and thoughts, as regards her mother especially. It’s a complicated thing and there’s no right or wrong thing to do in such a situation.

I feel like this book is a genuine view into a teenager’s brain, as told through diary entries. Phoebe is far from perfect and she really struggles sometimes. She has a hard life and this book tackles a lot of hard issues for anyone, especially a teenager who doesn’t have a great support system.

This book would be good for teenagers or anyone looking for an easy to read queer book about discovering who you like without all the drama of figuring out your sexuality. Once Phoebe realizes she likes Emma, it’s not oh no I’m a lesbian. It’s more like, oh no I have feelings. There’s no gay crisis, on anyone’s part. It’s actually really refreshing and not something I realized I needed. There are some somewhat negative opinions about people with down syndrome, but Phoebe educates herself and others as a result. And she can be downright mean/rude to people.

This book was a lot to my liking. It’s about Phoebe who is 15 years old that tries not to love people because she doesn’t want her heart to be broken. I was really looking forward to this book but was disappointed. In the beginning, I was interested in the story and I thought the dialogue writing was amazing. Throughout the story, I didn’t enjoy the dialogue writing as much because it just didn’t give you that experience of what the person really feels. I also felt that this book didn’t really have a plot to it and the only settings mentioned in this book were Phoebe’s house, Kate’s store, and briefly the school. It would be been better to travel all throughout Phoebe’s town to get that feeling of home. Then there were the characters...


I didn’t really enjoy the main character and thought she was just boring and rude. The only character I was liked was Emma because she was sweet and cared so much for the people in the thrift store. There is also a character with Down syndrome in this book and I felt that the way the author approached the topic wasn’t good in my opinion. There are more stories in this book that I felt weren’t rightly approached and could have been better. There is also romance in this book but I have to say why is there so much sex talk about 15-year-olds?! Like Phoebe’s best friend is having sex and isn’t really enjoying it at such a young age!

I felt that this book didn’t have the right approach and a good story plot. I was hoping that towards the end the story would be good but the ending wasn’t really good and ended flat. I don’t recommend reading this book.

This was an interesting LGBT+ YA story. Really enjoyed the characters. The plot felt weak at times but didn't really detract from the story- which is told through diary entries! Fun, quick read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this title before its US publication date.

I'll be honest, I haven't been reading or enjoying as much YA lately so I didn't have super high hopes for this. I thought it would read as young YA and that I might enjoy it but not love it. But I was so pleasantly surprised!

First of all, this is told in diary format and our MC Phoebe's frankness and angst immediately reminded me of Georgia from the Georgia Nicholson series and Mia from the Princess Diaries series. But this book went a lot deeper than either of those series.

I loved how much Phoebe grows throughout the book. I loved the found family aspect of the people who work at the thrift shop. I loved Phoebe's godmother, Kate! I loved how frank and open and positive it was about sex and discovering your sexuality. It also deals with grief and death and somewhat absent parents, all of which I thought was done really well and was age-appropriate.

A big recommend to any reader who loves angsty, funny, queer YA with a great cast of characters!

Such a cute LGBTQ+ love story. I think Phoebe really encompasses teen angst when it comes to love and also how teens harbor the hook up culture that runs rampant so the attachments are hard to have.

Love Is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann is such a fun young adult read. Phoebe is 15 and feels everyone around her are losing their minds due to this dumb thing called “love”. Her best friend just fell in love and forgot Phoebe even exists. Her mom is in love with her job as a traveling doctor for third world countries and leaves Phoebe to be raised by her godmother Kate for months at a time. And this is where she finds herself at the beginning of the new year: friendless, motherless, and living in someone else’s bedroom. It doesn’t help that she doesn’t particularly like people, but even when you don’t like people, you still need others (even if you don’t want to admit it). When Phoebe decides to help Kate out by volunteering for the thrift store she runs for cancer research, Phoebe doesn’t plan on making friends. Then she meets Emma. Everyone loves the friendly, beautiful, blue-eyed Emma. They become friends and Phoebe learns that sometimes, it’s OK to open up to others.
#LoveisforLosers #WibkeBrueggemann Release Date: Feb 23, 2021

This is so derivative of teens and YA, the voice of that crowd is so present in the writing. It's perfect lit for this audience. It's LGBTQ and I think it's a good read for young adults and presents a reality that we have within our society and community. Also, it's absolutely a hoot to read!

After reading this novel, I can understand why others see the content as falling on deaf ears. The book itself is a little too quirky for my taste, but some people may like it, mostly teens around her age. (While I am still a teen, I do not feel like I had a connection to this book). Teens will enjoy the format of the novel, which is in a diary story style. Love Is for Losers discusses a few heavy topics while still remaining light.

I would recommend this novel for younger teens from 13-16, though they should know what kind of content is inside the book before starting (as anyone else should) to prevent them from falling into a negative headspace.

This book was hilarious -- I lost count of how many times I laughed out loud as I was reading. Phoebe's voice is so unique and distinctive, and I really loved it. Highly recommend!

I tend to enjoy a variety of books, including YA titles.

And the idea of a young girl who feels like a fish out of water compared to her one friend and those in her school is the type of story I tend to enjoy.

Overall, this title was okay.

I liked the diary format used.
I could appreciate some of the feeling different from others.
I can feel empathetic of her feeling like love is for losers and that she'd never want to fall in love. Because her untraditional upbringing contributed to her ideas about love and relationships.

Even with all this, I had times where Phoebe's writing was heading to extreme whining. Having both been a teen and having parented teens and worked with them, I get that they make poor decisions and are still rather self-centered. But, Phoebe's character seems to have taken it to an extreme that bothered me a bit.

But, if you are looking for a title that has an LGBT component, then this could be a good option.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC of Love is for Losers. “Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.”