I read the mixtape to my life by Jake Martinez a little under a week ago at this point and I have to say, while I enjoyed it while reading, ultimately, it’s pretty…forgettable. I’m not sure I can even recount exactly what it’s about at this stage. From what I do remember, it’s a YA coming of age book, set in the 90s.

Our MC Justine lives in south Texas and is in the band. He loves music and is going for a captain’s position in the band that has only ever been a girl’s role. His band mates bully him (I don’t think we ever find out why or where it stemmed from), he has pressure from his parents over being ‘manly’ and he is continuously made to feel like an outcast culturally, constantly being called a ‘coconut’. Oh, he also has shitty friends and is verbally and physically harassed for being gay.

Enter our love interest, Dominic. A boy who stood up for Justin when they were kids, is back in town.
I actually really like the general plot and story lines we had going on; I just think the execution and the situations that arose could be more realistic. I don’t really want to say too much about that though, as I don’t want to get into any spoilers.

Justine is constantly being put down and bullied for being who he is, even by those he considers friends. I think this was one of my most hated moments of this book: Justin’s so-called ‘best friend’ calls him a ‘f-ggot’ in front of his band mates, including those that bully him, and not a paragraph later Justin is the one APOLOGISING. it’s made out as if the argument was his fault and the fact that his best friend calls his something so despicable is just brushed aside and made as if its okay. which it’s not. I wanted Justine to be pissed, not apologetic.
I did think the romance was slightly insta-lovey, however they did have history so I let that slide, and ended up kinda loving it. Dominic was definitely my favourite part of the book.

While this book was a middle-of-the-road kind of book for me, I would still recommend it for those that love queer YA coming of age stories. I will always recommend those kinds of books.

The Mixtape to My Life was an enjoyable and quick read. A lot of the characters were pretty likeable and most of them also felt relatable to a certain extent. The book also touches onto an important subject and in my opinion deals quite well with both the issues of homophobia and coming to terms with your own sexuality as well as the issue of the main character not being able to really fit in with his Mexican peers. One aspect I really enjoyed was getting a deeper insight into the main characters family as well as a having a realistic representation of his father slowly coming to terms with his son's sexuality.
The main issue I have had with this book is that it feels way too fast paced. A lot of the events happen very quickly and feel rushed. So sometimes aspects are of the story as well as the characters’ emotions don’t really get enough space to be explored by the reader.
Overall, I believe The Mixtape to My Life is definitely an important story that is both enjoyable and funny at times but still has enough emotional depth to deal with more serious issues and let the reader emphasise with the characters.

To be honest I had a hard time with this book.
At first it was hard for me to like Justin. It got better during the book because his passion for music and his overall believes but he still stayed way to childish for me. Maybe it is because YA novels these days often have very mature protagonists, but the characters in this book felt really childish and thoughtless at times.
The book per se felt way too rushed and extreme. The actions didn't fit with each other smoothly, more like walking down stairs and missing a step.
Everything was based around the band camp and I really liked it. The teacher was cool too!
In summary I would say, that the book was okay. I really liked the character development and the setting in the 90s (not many books published these days are set there and I really like it!) but didn't like the rushed decisions.

The Mixtape to My Life
5 stars
Such a cute and wholesome coming of age story! I loved it and was engrossed from the beginning! It is so easy to get attached to these characters and love them! I laughed and I cried right along with them! I throughly enjoyed this one and can’t wait to see what else this author writes! I am here for it 🥰

This book had a lot of issues for me. The main one is how fast everything moved. This book only took place over a few weeks and somehow the characters fall in love and run away together over that short time frame. All the relationships were SO problematic to me. I thought the love interests actions were supposed to be that problematic and they were gonna break up. But no, apparently his extreme jealousy and mistrust is supposed to be cute and endearing. And the best friend was awful. He was disrespectful and self centered, I really though at the beginning that part of the plot was going to be the MC ditching him and getting better friends. And I don't care about the excuses his friends made, there is 0 valid reasons to ever call someone a slur, yet both his best friends did and it was seen as forgivable. And the main character himself was so boring to me. He read like one of those "I'm not like other girls" quirky characters. His whole personality was that he wrote poetry and listened to mix tapes. oh man and the SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT. I could barely get through this book because I was cringing so much. This book just really didn't appeal to me

I was really looking forward to this one and it was a decent read. I think my issue is that it just felt a little underwhelming. I don't think this story was 100% fleshed out. I wanted to connect more with the book but I just didn't.

An e-ARC was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange of an honest review. This does not effect my opinion in any way.

I think The Mixtape to my Life had everything to be one of my favorite book : it is a queer story and it tackles hard hitting subjects. But for some reasons, somewhere along the way, it misses the mark. I mean, I still liked the book -- at least enought for me to rate it three stars -- but I'm not even sure I would recommend it. Strange, isn't it?

Anyway. The Mixtape to my Life is about a Mexican teenager navigating through his life. He's being bullied because some of his classmate don't consider him "Mexican enough" since he is light skinned, doesn't speak Spanish that much and is gay. Though he isn't out in is high school is still bullied for being gay. Then Dominic, a guy who stood up for him once came back in his small town and Justin's life takes another turn from there.

Stories about identity are my favorite. I like how messy they are because it is how they should be, because finding who you are and who you want to be isn't always that easy.

Justin struggles through high school because he feels like he doesn't belong anywhere. He has always felt like he was kind of an outsider because he's kind of a nerd music, he's gay and even if he's best friend Benny knows it, he doesn't have his place, more like he's about to lose it. When Dominic comes back in his life, he finally feels like he has a home but obviously nothing goes right.

Justin and Dominic's love story is messy. They both have a crush on each other but if Justin is sure about his feelings -- he knows he's gay -- Dominic doesn't know what to do. Unlike Justin, he never really put a label on his feelings and feels confused. I liked this part of the story, I like how the author showed that not all teenagers knows how to "name" their sexual orientation, how they need time to find out, how it's not something you find out with a snap of your fingers. I liked how nuanced it was: Dominic struggled quite a bit while another character -- who also didn't know he was bisexual until he started to make out with his friend -- was more casual about it. It shows that identity can be a struggle for some people but also isn't for others.

Justin's relationship with his father is a big part of the story and to be perfectly honest, it was quite hard to read. Justin's dad -- Kike -- is one of those guy, you know those who says "guy must play football or they're not real man," "real men take care of their problem by themselves," "real men don't dance while singing." And honestly he was such a pain in the ass, I honestly just wanted to punch him in the face. He shamed Justin for what he liked, made him feel like he wasn't welcome in his own house for who he is and even when we discover why he acts like this, I didn't buy it. Well, more like, it was an easy explanation, as if once we read why he's a shitty father, we're supposed to forgive him. Though, to be perfectly honest, I did appreciate how is father tried to understand his son at the end of the story but I guess it wasn't enough for me because even if he was nice, I still had all the bad stuff he said in the back of my mind.

Justin is Mexican, there's no doubt about that -- though I'm not sure for all his classmate: I feel like some of them were also Mexican and the others were white but I wouldn't be able to say which one were a POC. His struggles with his Mexican identity is something I could totally relate too. He's mocked by his classmate and is even called "coconut" because he doesn't "act" like a Mexican. He can understand some Spanish but doesn't speak it that much.
That's where the coconut nickname originated. Brown on the outside, white on the inside, he would say to me. It might not have stuck so much if I hadn't pointed out that they kept telling me how white I was.
I kinda regret how the author didn't talk more about this matter. I wished he understood he was truly a Mexican even if he didn't speak Spanish, even if he's light skinned. Reading the story, it felt like the author put it in the story, saying like "oh hey, Justin is also bullied about that" but nothing more. He doesn't have a conversation about this with someone else and I can't say for sure how he feels about this by the end of the story.

Well. How do I say this. Some of the characters' actions are truly questionnable. Benny and his girlfriend kissed Justin out of the blue and without asking him first because he said he didn't have his first kiss yet and I just? No? Why would you do that? And let's not talk about how Benny pulled down Justin's pants in front of his neighbour because wtf.

The overall dynamics between all the characters wasn't what I enjoyed the most. I liked how Benny was supportive, how he stood up for Justin but it felt really superficial to me. Most of the plot was based on misunderstanding and secrets and yeah, it's not my favorite I guess. The plot was really repetitive : everything is alright -> Justin discovers a friend hid something from him -> he gets mad -> resolution -> everything is alright. I mean, it can work once or maybe twice but it gets boring.

I guess Justin and Dominic were a cute couple. A bit cheesy but still cute. You can feel and understand how much they love each other but for some reasons, it didn't move me that much -- maybe my heart is made of stone. Though what I really liked is how much they talked about having sex with each other: when they should do it, if they really wanted to. It was a nice touch to their relationship and I wished they took the time to solve their misunderstanding by talking as much as they talked about having sex.

The Mixtape to my Life was an enjoyable, easy read. It is something you go into when you want something quick to read. I don't regret reading this book though I wish the author went deeper on some subjects.

Would I recommend it? Like I said: probably not but not because I didn't like this story but because I think I read other books with a similar premise who did it better. But it is still a book a lot of people could enjoy, quick enough so you don't feel like you're wasting your time by reading it.

This was more of a 3.5 that I rounded up to a 4.

I am usually not a big fan of YA contemp, but I picked this up based on the cover and I do not regret it at all. For the record, I'm an SEA diasporan, so while I can't say that I know exactly what Justin Ortega feels like I was wholly sympathetic with how much of an outcast he felt among his own community.

Like Justin, I cannot speak my mother language and anything I say comes out wrong, and boy have I been teased for it. By family and friends and work colleagues, so the way Jake Martinez writes how it affects Justin was like a smack to the face. I spent much of the book going "OH HEY, I remember something like this happening to me!" One the one hand, the reminder is painful, on the other hand it was absolutely amazing to feel seen like that.

Justin is a deeply flawed person, but he's also kind, loyal, and only wanting to live his best life. I actually teared up many times reading this because I could sympathise so hard with Justin's struggle to be who he is, without hurting his family or throwing away his heritage. And the romance, though it only plays a small part, is sweet.

If I had any teens to recommend books to, this one would absolutely be on the list.

I had two big issues with this book: 1) too much gushy romance and not enough music, and 2) the timeline of the story was incredibly unrealistic. The entire story takes place over two weeks during summer vacation. To get from point A to point B during that timeframe was ridiculous. I won't tell you what point B is so as to not spoil the book, but I will tell you that my eyes rolled. Add to this the excess teeny bop romance and I cringed through most of the book. I didn't care that it was two males, it was just too much over the top. I wanted a John Hughes story and I got a teenage Nicholas Sparks instead.

First off, I would like to thank author Jake Martinez, Deep Hearts YA, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.⠀
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Ugh, this book! How badly I wanted to love it.. But I just couldn’t get myself to fully give in to it. I do want to say this may be because I am in my early 20’s. The characters and storyline just seemed so baseline to me. Very childish and dramatic, and the story didn’t seem to progress at all. The main character, Justin, was cringeworthy at times with the tantrums he pulled. ⠀
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I do believe a younger person reading this book may find some comfort within its pages. Some things rang true for me, making me think back to high school and how hard it is to be gay. Struggling with sexual identity is a very real problem for a lot of kids in school, and this book shines a bright light on that. ⠀
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Overall, I’m going to have to give this book three stars. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who is out of school/my age. Middle school aged kids would probably find this a better read than I did. It IS always refreshing to see LGBTQ+ characters, though! 🏳️‍🌈

THE MIXTAPE TO MY LIFE by Jake Martinez | Grade: B | No spoilers ahead.

The premise of an LGBT teen from conservative South Texas was one I had not seen done before, so I was eager to read it. Another compelling aspect, after reading about the author, is that it seems to be at least partially autobiographical. Both of these things got me excited for this quick read. However, this read let me down in several ways. The least of which was the plot. I actually genuinely liked the plot. My only criticism of it may be that it could have been fleshed out a little more. At times, it felt a little rushed. And this leads me to the biggest problem I found with this book was the overall sense of underdevelopment. None of the characters seemed to really lift off the page. There was never anything there to make me care about them or what happened to them. Maybe as the author continues to write more novels, his characters will become a little more nuanced and memorable. My favorite part was definitely the main character’s, Justin’s, love of music and all the music references throughout. While this review came out largely negative, there was still a lot to enjoy with this book. A very special thank you to @netgalley and @deepheartsya for an advanced copy of the novel. While I of course appreciated this opportunity, my review is presented without bias.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Guess what? I needed to read this book right now. I needed something to sweep me away from our crazy world happenings. "Mixtape to my Life" had me invested very early on. I liked the setting which was around 1994-1995. The movie Speed was playing at the movie theater. Our main character Justin loves his Walkman and 'old' 80's hair bands. Justin is a gay (in the closet mostly) band kid and his junior year of high school is about to start. His best friend Benny knows about Justin but his family and other classmates do not although they suspect. When Justin gets a new, hot neighbor named Dominic his whole world begins to change. The book was so fast paced and enjoyable. His struggles as a gay teen come across realistically as do his friendships. It is nice to see how much Justin grows a person during the book's time span. The romance is pretty cute. I had one complaint that I hope gets fixed. One of the characters makes a "that's what she said" joke and it does not ring realistic for this time period at all although in fairness apparently this saying starting being used on Saturday Night Live around 1975. While the subject matter touches lightly along some darker topics, it still ends up being a very cute and feel good ending. I highly recommend this one.

i got thru 21% of this and so far:

- mc compared eyes of his crush to eyes of his mom
- mc's friend pulled his pants and underwear down in public, specifically in front of mc's crush's house
- mc admitted to his friend and friend's gf that he never kissed anyone, so the girl kissed him without saying a word about it
- and then made the friend kiss him too, which the mc also didn't see coming
- it wasn't just a peck, they friench kissed

on top of that, the writing is dry and repetitive, and uninviting in every possible way; the mc seems like a pretentious asshole frankly; someone called a dick a 'snake one caries around'; there's homophobia of the 90s'...

there's a pandemic going on, i do not have time for this

4 stars

What a cute and wholesome coming of age story! It shows how 17 year old Justin Ortega goes about discovering how he’s different than what his parents want him to be and how to accept himself for this difference. From loving 80s hair metal bands, playing cymbals in his high school band to loving guys as more than friends, Justin learns to love himself and realizes it’s okay to open up to others. He goes from having one single friend to gaining multiple by the end of the story, even gaining more than a friendship from someone he least expected to come back into his life. I laughed, I teared up and I overall had an enjoyable reading experience. I can’t wait to see what else Jake Martinez writes.

** Thank you to Netgalley for an arc of this story to review in advance **

*My thanks to the publisher for providing me with an ARC on Netgalley in exchange for a fair review*

The Mixtape to My Life is a YA coming-of-age story about Justin Ortega, a gay 17-year-old boy who, like many people his age, is desperately trying to find his place in the world. He is coming into his sexuality, finally learning to accept himself, even if others are not quite ready to do so yet. Fearful of his family finding out, Justin hides this aspect of his life and escapes into his favorite 80's bands and takes solace from his best friend, Benny. When Benny starts dating a girl from Justin's marching band, and a boy from Justin's past comes back to the school with the same sweet, protective nature that he never could quite forget— his tentative peace is thrown into orbit.

Here we have a classic slice-of-life novel, and from the POV of a teenager comes with it all the melodrama and intense emotion that highschool seems to burn into all of us at that age. Justin at times was selfish, dramatic, and flat out hard to follow but he was also familiar. I could recognize his struggle to control his emotions, the feelings of being left out or made fun of, and perhaps most terrifying of all: What it felt like to fall in love for the first time. There was simplistic, soapy joy in Justin and Dominic's sweet romance that brought a smile to my face. Benny is a brother to Justin in every sense of the word, and his girlfriend Lila was also a generous and loving friend. What I enjoyed about their dynamic the most was the truth of it. How they could be flawed, and angry, and even mean at times but always came back together in the end.

It fell down a bit in the middle for me; the plot muddled and slowed and there were cheesy aspects of the dialogue that painted some of the conversations as insincere where they should not have been. There is quite a bit of whiplash happening in the last few chapters; situations that I was not entirely sure were needed to crunch into the finale as some were left rather unresolved or glossed over.

The read was quick, the characters very much their age and refreshing with it, and of course—happiness wins the day. And isn't that what we all wished for in the end?

The Mixtape to My Life by Jake Martinez has some important messages in it. Justin Ortega is 16 at the beginning of the novel. He's a sweet young man... who already knows that he's gay but hasn't told anyone. At home, he worries that his Mexican father will let the binds of machismo influence the way in which he thinks of his son if he comes out. At school, his best friend Benny has guessed but no one else knows. Well, the bullies think that they know he's gay... they're convinced enough to call him "fag" and worse at school.

I really felt for Justin while he was at school. The bullying was really well-written...and it's an authentic-sounding teenage voice... not the kind of bullying that is often written by adults. There was one person who stood up for Justin in the past and that was Dominic. When Dominic turns up again as Justin's neighbor, there are certainly still feelings there.

The relationship between the two young men is very sweet. It felt a little rushed at times, but maybe that's the youth of the characters. They're certainly in a rush to be together once they realize they are on the same page. Maybe it was because they'd both been thinking about each other since the fateful time that Dominic defended him.

The relationship between Justin and his father is strained. His father isn't an overly emotional man and Justin doesn't want to tell his father that he's gay. That sets up a wall between them that's only exacerbated by the fact that Justin's father is a football coach. he wants his son to be tough, play sports and date girls. And really, if Justin could possibly change, it seems as though he would. I think that's probably a common feeling for a lot of young people when they are struggling with their sexuality.

All in all, this is a nice book. The plot isn't overly convoluted, but the characters are well-developed and the couplings are sweet and believable.