really cute book. loved giving queer students a chance to see themselves. It was a cute refreshing read, and I loved the characters!!

Interessante Grundidee

Der Jugendroman von Autorin Sophie Gonzales beinhaltet eine wirklich interessante und außergewöhnliche Ausgangssituation. Eine, die ich so in einem Buch noch nie vorgefunden habe. Ich bewerte es grundsätzlich positiv, wenn ein:e Autor:in mich überraschen kann. Denn das sorgt oft dazu, dass ich großes Interesse an einem Roman entwickle und mit Begeisterung beim Lesen dabei bin. So war es auch zunächst bei „Perfect on Paper“.

Der lockere Schreibstil der Autorin hat es mir leicht gemacht der Geschichte zu folgen. Die Charaktere waren durchaus interessant, konnten mein Interesse aber nur phasenweise binden. Manche Passagen haben mich sehr gut unterhalten, andere ließen mich etwas kalt.

Mit einer Entwicklung am Ende des Buches hatte ich so meine Probleme, da das meiner Meinung nach nicht zum Alter der Charaktere gepasst hat, aber gut.

Ich hatte ein teils gutes, teils durchschnittliches Leseerlebnis, dafür gibt es drei Sterne.

Oh my gosh where to begin with this story!
In this story, we get to see darcy, a secret relationship advice running teenager deal with the cost of hiding things from her best friend who she loves. She also has to balance helping Alexander someone she thought she'd never be friends with help win his girl back.
Darcys arc was so amazing to see and remind us how hard high-school and figuring out how relationships and consequences work in the real world.
My absolute favorite thing I love about Sophie's writing is how well she writes the lbgtq community! This book had such well done rep including some of my favorite descriptions for us on the ace spectrum. I highly recommend this to our coming of age readers and ones to help describe how they are feeling!

Oh my gosh where to begin with this story!
In this story, we get to see darcy, a secret relationship advice running teenager deal with the cost of hiding things from her best friend who she loves. She also has to balance helping Alexander someone she thought she'd never be friends with help win his girl back.
Darcys arc was so amazing to see and remind us how hard high-school and figuring out how relationships and consequences work in the real world.
My absolute favorite thing I love about Sophie's writing is how well she writes the lbgtq community! This book had such well done rep including some of my favorite descriptions for us on the ace spectrum. I highly recommend this to our coming of age readers and ones to help describe how they are feeling!

Overview: Darcy is like Hannah Montana. Well, kinda. She's not a secret pop star, but she does have a hidden identity. She's the girl behind Locker 89, home of the best relationship advice in California. Or, at least, at her high school. People will drop a letter and $10 in the locker, and Darcy collects them after school when her mom, a teacher there, stays late. This goes perfectly until Brougham catches her. While it's a minor disaster, he also has a fascinating Australian accent and some traces of charm, and he ropes Darcy into giving him personal relationship coaching to win back his girlfriend. But maybe he doesn't want his ex-girlfriend back after all. And maybe Darcy doesn't might get over her painful crush on her best friend. All you need to know is that Sophie wrote a love triangle I actually love (never thought I'd see that day). Overall: 5+++++

Characters: 5 I'm pretty sure Darcy and I are the same person. I love her sarcastic voice and her outlook on life. She's driven and ambitious. Her relationship advice business has grown so much because it works. Darcy has put in the time and research to understands how humans interact with each other. That doesn't make her own relationships any easier. Darcy is hilarious and messy and relatable, and even when she takes her turn as the antagonist, you still get where she's coming from (or at least I do). I want Darcy to be my best friend. We even have the same taste in One Direction solo music.

On top of giving out romantic advice, Darcy is also a member of the Queer and Questioning Club. I love all the members of the club and the conversations that happen there. Through the club and in life interactions in general, Darcy is coming into her own queerness. She's proudly bi throughout the book, but as her crushes shift and certain crushes cross the line into a relationship, Darcy wonders if she can date a straight guy and still be "queer enough". While the answer is of course she can, the way it's explored is so important and honest. Darcy has the conversations about being bi and being queer that need to be had like this in an unfiltered way with all her fears up front. There are so many intricacies to being queer that sometimes the questions aren't around the identity in the first place and being comfortable with that but feeling enough of it. Also, there are still so many misconceptions around what it means to be bisexual or biromantic that this conversation needs to be front and center. There is so much biphobia that comes from pure ignorance that addressing it head on is incredibly important. This is such an important book to have in YA for that reason. There are also amazing moments discussing asexuality and other identities through the club and through the letters that Darcy handles. For that reason alone, everyone needs to read this book.

Beyond Darcy, we have a full cast of amazing, developed characters. Starting off, Darcy's second in command is her sister, Ainsley, who is in community college now and lives at home with Darcy and her mom. Ainsley is trans, an amazing fashion designer, and always fighting with Darcy over the make-up samples that Brooke brings over. Ainsley is truly the best older sister anyone could ask for, and she's always there to support Darcy when she needs it most. As for the rest of her family, Darcy sees her dad a couple times a month. He's a pretty minor character, but I did like how she worked through some of his (seemingly unintentional) biphobic comments with the Q&Q club. She also confronts issues she has with her mom's removed, disinterested demeanor when Darcy tries to turn to her for advice. There's a super constructive series of moments that really model good parenting and coming to acknowledge flaws and mistakes.

Moving on to Darcy's friends, we first meet Brooke. Darcy's had a crush on Brooke from the start, but who wouldn't? Brooke is funny and sweet and bubbly. She works at a make-up counter and is always looking for Darcy's help on homework. Also, Brooke is a lesbian. Still, Darcy hasn't found a way to make a move, and Brooke finds herself caught up in an enemies to lovers relationship not with Darcy. Then there's Brougham who starts cold and aloof but turns out to be sarcastic and adorable. He lives in a mansion, but the house is constantly echoing with his parents shouting at each other. It made me so happy to watch Brougham start to open up. Everyone in this book is remarkably well developed. It makes for such an enriching reading experience.

Plot: 5 Like I teased you with in the synopsis, SOPHIE WROTE A LOVE TRIANGLE I AM IN LOVE WITH. I am love triangle hater number 1, so this is a big deal. But I genuinely loved both players, I could see merits to both players, and the way that the story progressed was so satisfying. I think it works 1. because all the characters are highly developed and 2. the plot has so many good twists and turns to both sides that everything unfolds super naturally. Also, everyone spends time in the friend zone at different points in the book. Through the entire book, it feels like you're truly watching messy, annoying, sometimes beautiful life play out. There isn't a moment in the entire story where I felt "author Sophie" reaching in to push two characters together or yank them apart. Every choice, every plot progression felt completely natural. There's a friendship plot thread, a family thread, a relationship thread, and the whole locker business to follow, and they intermingle in such a satisfying and all encompassing way.

Similarly, I get really irritated often when characters self sabotage because it often feels exaggerated for a plot point, but Sophie does an incredible job of spelling out motivation in an organic, understandable way. Even when I was thinking "don't do it, Darcy", I also had a sense of "you'd probably do that too". I guess this is all to say that this book makes sense in the most glorious way.

Writing: 5 You all already know I loved the writing. The craft is exquisite, the voice perfectly on pitch with the story, and I want all these characters to be my new best friends. Usually, I have a couple minor complaints that I just don't include here, but I have literally nothing bad to say about this book. From a formatting/writing choice standpoint, I did want to note how I loved most chapters starting with letters. Ever since I was a little kid, I always loved books that included letters, and these are brilliantly funny and relatable. Since they started each chapter, I'd always end up reading more in one sitting than I intended cause I had to start the next chapter's letter, and then I was hooked!

The only thing that makes me sad about this book is that it's not out till March (but that's somehow only 4 months away?!). Still, I highly recommend preorder the book as a gift to your future self.

I appreciated the variety of diversity, equity, and inclusion topics casually mentioned in this book and the normalization of many different topics that teens may not know how to express yet.

‘Perfect on Paper’ is a brilliant, much-needed story with a whole lot of humor and heart.

Darcy Phillips has a secret. She’s been using locker #89 to run an anonymous relationship advice service. Things are going well… until Alexander Brougham discovers her secret. In exchange for his silence, Darcy agrees to help advise him on how to win his ex-girlfriend back. It should be easy, right? Not complicated at all. Famous last words.

Sophie Gonzales breathes new life into this genre with this fresh, unique novel. I love how she explores bisexuality and biphobia in such a sensitive and nuanced way. The diversity of her characters is a delight to read, not only because we need more LGBTQIA+ representation in print, but because she’s created a narrative where the characters all leap off of the page. Darcy’s path of self discovery feels so true to teenage hood and that time of life. And her interactions with Alexander also embody a kind of inimitable teenage awkwardness that is as endearing as it is relatable. Gonzales has also created dynamic secondary characters who infuse even more life into the story.

I cannot stress enough how much I loved this book. I think it’s the kind of story that has reach beyond its genre, and is one of my favorite reads in quite a while.

**Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.**

Darcy thinks that she has all the answers to love – life – friendship and family, and she gives it anonymously at $10 a letter. She thinks that her system in impenetrable until one day she is caught by someone who is looking for her help. Rather than be exposed – she goes against her better judgment and ends up helping a fellow classmate win back his ex girlfriend.

This novel is a cute, fast and easy read. It is very diverse and tries to dispel the typical stereotypes and familiar tropes when dealing with dynamics between the mix of characters. I enjoyed discovering more details about the other characters, including Brougham. I did find some characters a not surface level but otherwise. good read.

Disclaimer: overall, this story deserves a solid 4-star-rating, but I can't give anything less than 5 stars to the amazing representation it has!

"It’s when bisexuals start to believe the biphobia they’re surrounded by. We’re told that our sexuality isn’t real, or that we’re straight if we’re with another gender, and that our feelings don’t count if we’ve never dated a certain gender, that kind of crap. Then we hear it so many times we doubt ourselves.”

Every aspect of this book was remarkable. Slightly flawed, yet absolutely likable bisexual MC; two adorable love interests: MC's sweetheart best friend and seems-stuck-up-but-actually-funny-and-down-to-earth guy; realistic family dinamics; all my beautiful supporting queer characters.
Every page was filling me with warm, fuzzy feelings!

There better be a whole lot of hype surrounding this book!

I really enjoyed this book. It is great to see more representation than what I would have as a teen in the early 90's. I loved Darcy and Brougham as characters, they are flawed but decnet humans, I think both of them were incredibly mature for their age in some way. I loved watching the character development of both of them grow individually and as a pair throughout the story. The subplot about Darcy's best friend Brooke was interesting but probably made me the most uncomfortable because they were so mean to each other in anger, but then bounced back fairly quickly as friends after that. I am not sure that is realistic after the huge things that happened between them, but at the same time I know it has to fit the narrative of the story. My absolute favorite thinga out this story was another sub plot and thatis the relationship of Darcy with her sister. I'd love to see her get jer own novel and learn more about her journey!

I loved this book. I knew I liked Sophie’s writing from Only Mostly Devastated, and she did not disappointed with this book. I adored the premise and thought the characters were great. I loved Darcy and Brougham and thought they had great chemistry. Such a fun book!

wow! this book is so.....important !! Representation really matters and Sophie Gonzales wrote it perfectly!
Darcy is a young bisexual girl who write relationship advices secretly to other students, she's like a little cupidon.
I knew i would hurt at some point while reading this book, but it really hurted so much.
Darcy is such a sweet character, even though she made a lot of mistakes (but who doesnt?).
I didnt think i would enjoy the romance that much, but it was so cute.

One particular moment in the book was so important to me because it dealed with bi representation and society biphobia and it really had me in tears.
PLEASE GO READ PERFECT ON PAPER WHEN IT IS OUT, ON MARCH 9TH 2021

What a fun read. Sharp prose, flawed but likable characters, realistic relationships, and just enough will-they-won't-they to keep us turning pages while Gonzales explores deeper meanings within the varied interpersonal relationships (romantic, friendly, and familial). POP reads like a breeze that allows its messages to sink in without being heavy handed or slogging down the pace of the unfolding plot. I was rooting for everyone in this story and while the tone set us up for a triumphant happy ending, Gonzales keeps her situations nuanced. The humour in the voice is spectacular. The representation is essential. The world feels grounded and relatable. It's no wonder three more books are already on their way.

WOW just WOW.
This book is so relevant now a days, that teens and schools should be reading this. I have read other books that are LGBTQ, but it was nothing like this one.
The love in this book that Darcy and Alexander have, and the illustration of this book is just wow.
What to say what to say… I feel just saying wow is not going to do this justice, I also do not want to give anything away because this is one that if you only want to read one book this year. Then this is the book you need to read.
This book had everything that you are looking for in a book. You have laughs, tears and an emotional rollercoaster that you can help but love the bumps along the way.
With everything that is going on in the world atm I do not think that this book could come at a better time, and to have it written as a YA book could not be better. When this book comes out next March its one you gotta read.

I had high hopes for this story, and... they were all met. And then some. Oh boy.

The themes Sophie Gonzales approaches in this book hit extremely close to home, and, as was the case with her previous novel, Only Mostly Devastated, were written in a very thoughtful, delicate way that left me unable to put it down until I had read it entirely.

The story touches on themes of internalized biphobia, LGBT+ relationships, parental conflict, lying... Expressions of emotions and feelings are on point (I might have cried, more than once) and the book is full of all the complicated relationships and drama that are so characteristic of high school experiences. The romance is also super sweet, which is always a great point.

Darcy and Brooke... the unrequited love trope is something I'm very partial towards - if it's done well, it can be so much fun for the readers, and this one is done perfectly. I also loved the relationship between the main character and her transgender sister, and the way all of the characters were fully fleshed out and each had their own journeys throughout the course of the story. These characters aren't perfect, they make mistakes, (and downright questionable choices, looking at you Darcy) but they try to learn from them and do better - and that makes them all the more likeable and attaching for me.

Some people have mentioned the common plot points with the how Sex Education (the secret locker and giving advice to other students part) but, as with OMD, since I haven't watched that show, I didn't have any sense of déjà-vu. (Additionally, as the author said in a tweet recently, this book was mostly written by the time Sex Ed came out - it's not plagiarism in any way!)

This is absolutely a five stars book for me, and I would definitely recommend it to YA romance readers, and contemporary YA readers in general. Sophie Gonzales is now firmly on my list of authors I'll read every book of, and I'm so excited to see what she writes next!

P.S.: As an additional note : some reviewers have mentioned that this story was "unexpectedly mature" and "not appropriate for YA". I won't elaborate too much on that here, because it would honestly deserve an entire book, but I'll tell you this : the most mature thing in this book is a kiss, and I think we know exactly what this person had in mind when they made this critic. LGBT representation is not inherently "mature". Our existences aren't "mature", they just are.

Leave queer kids alone. Stop policing queer books.

This book is perfectly wonderful and takes you on a ride, It leaves you guessing and wondering who each person that rights a letter to the locker is.

Perfect on Paper 3.5/5 stars

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!

Darcy Phillips is a connoisseur of relationship advice who starts a side hustle answering her classmates’ requests for relationship advice via an unused locker. Alexander Brougham, the enigmatic, Australian swimmer, catches her in the act of retrieving the letters and asks her for coaching to get his ex-girlfriend back. Turns out, while Darcy has a “95% success rate” with her advice, she doesn’t always use the letters she gets to help others, and she definitely hasn’t used her advice to understand herself.

Overall, this was a sweet book that worked really hard (sometimes it felt a bit too hard) to give queer kids a space to live their identities in their truest ways. Darcy is a bisexual girl who struggles with what it means to be a relationship with a man and how it might be perceived to negate her queerness. Darcy’s sister is trans, and they are surrounded by other kids who are queer. This book does not explore negative reactions to queer students from families, peers, and teachers, which is refreshing for sure.

For me, the first half of the book was entertaining, if a bit slow, and my overall impression was that it all felt really young. That might seem like a silly conclusion to come to, since this is YA fiction, but as an adult I do not typically find I have that experience with most YA. The conflict and momentum of this story lives in the second half, which I found developed into a more mature and interesting narrative as it built to its conclusion.

Overall, while I didn’t love everything about this book, it was an entertaining story and a super positive representation of bisexual identity and queer identity more broadly. I can see this being a great novel for teenagers looking to see themselves reflected on the page.

darcy just wanted to secure her bag... this is why private school shouldnt be real but honestly this story was so cute i shouldve been studying for my history class but i read this all in a day and they small excerpts of letters and darcys thinking process gave me flashbacks to when i used to take a psych class i love it so much

What a wonderful, fun book! As an adult, I loved every aspect of this teenage romance. The portrayal of so many diverse characters is amazing-any young adult who is questioning their gender or sexuality, or wants to learn more about those that are, will really appreciate this story.
My only complaint is that I didn't have to opportunity to read such a well-rounded and lighthearted story as a young adult.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN. Diverse characters who were charming without being unrelatable, a plot that was complex without being convoluted, and a relationship that made me squeal with joy - plus echoes of Simon Vs. and Sex Education with a bisexual protagonist who's allowed to crush on boys AND girls? LOVE. This was so cute and warm and fun, and I truly cannot recommend it highly enough!