I was lucky to win an eARC of this book, and I devoured it in a day.

As someone who related to Ophelia, being biracial and discovering her sexuality in HS, this story was a nostalgic and emotional ride. I loved every page, every character, every quote. I laughed and cried and can’t wait for others to experience this story

This was a cute story. It had great representation. I wouldn’t say that it’s my fave queer YA read but a decent one overall.

On my list of most anticipated YA books of 2022, OPHELIA EVER AFTER is really high up there. You didn’t need to tell me more than queer Latinx coming out story to get me on board but what we ended up getting was so much more than that. This book is so warm and comforting and just feels like a giant hug.

The author wove together an incredibly wholesome coming out tale that was chock full of teenage angst and that delicious uncertainty that you only feel at 18, when the cusp of adulthood is upon you. Also, found family supremacists – this story is for you.

It’s prom season and Ophelia (yes, named by her English Lit professor mother after Ophelia from Hamlet) is worrying about regular teenage girl things… her dress, her boutonniere and her date. Only the date she’s daydreaming about might not be a boy?

Most queer coming of age stories I’ve read have had the MC be certain of their sexuality and the internal struggle revolves around self-acceptance and acceptance from their families. I’ve never read a story where the main character is still questioning and exploring their sexuality. Is Ophelia thinking a little too much about this girl because she’s a new crush? What’s the normal amount of attention are you supposed to give other girls? Can you notice they’re pretty? Can you want to kiss them?

Ophelia can’t stop thinking about Talia. But Ophelia is definitely not gay…right?

Ophelia is especially struggling with her sexuality because she is known in the friend group as the boy crazy one. Since here elementary school days, she’s been a romantic, always having a crush on some boy or another. Her parents, her friends, everyone important in her life knows this to be true and now, so close to the end of one chapter of her life, she’s scared to rock the boat. How will everyone react to her if she comes out? Will everyone’s perceptions of her be shattered because of the illusion of straightness? How will she navigate queerness as a biracial child? The uncertainty Ophelia feels is palpable and you can’t help but sympathize with her as the stress gets to her and she begins to lash out at the people in her life and she tries to navigate these complex feelings.

The group dynamics in this are undoubtedly the strongest point of the book. While Ophelia’s friend group is large, their interactions, hopes, dreams, fears and petty drama feel so organic and real and true to their age - the uncomfortable feeling of watching a love triangle in your friend group, the immersion of two groups into one, wanting to fit yourself into a specific label or box.

I think this is a story that all teens should read, whether they’re queer or not. The message that OPHELIA EVER AFTER portrays is an important one – you are a constant work in progress, self-discovery isn’t easy and you don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t need to fit yourself to someone else’s expectations of you. You just need to be authentic to yourself.

The only concern I had with this book was in regards to Ophelia’s best friend and next door neighbor, Sammie. Sammie is a Pakistani-American Muslim boy whose full name is Samuel. While Sammie can certainly be a nickname for a brown male character (for names such as Samir), Samuel is not a Muslim name (nor is his middle name Yadid – which, I believe, is a Hebrew name and unlikely to be used by a Pakistani family when naming a child). This is a small point of contention (what’s in a name, after all) but still significant enough for me to mention in this review because every time I read “Samuel” in the text, as a desi Muslim American myself, I felt a bit discombobulated. At first I thought I had missed something and that perhaps Sammie was half white, like Ophelia. But both of Sammie's parents are Pakistani and so it felt like an unexplained oddity.

Overall, this hug-in-a-book should definitely be on your radar! I can’t wait to read more book from Racquel Marie in the future.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

It's Ophelia's senior year of high school, and while her friends sort out details about prom, she's content to tend to her rose garden and just be her usual boy-crazy self. But when Ophelia develops a crush on classmate, Talia, she begins to question not only her sexuality but everything she believes about who she is and how her friends see her too.

I cannot express how much I loved this book! Debut author Raquel Marie has so much voice in her writing and pours the best of it into Ophelia, a beautiful and richly crafted character who leaps off the page. Not only that but Ophelia is surrounded by a super diverse group of friends (not only in sexuality but in race as well). I think this book has the potential to speak to young adults learning about themselves and their sexuality and especially those who aren't quite sure where they fit in.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC. This is easily one of the best books I've read this year. I will be recommending this book all over the place.

This book was a super sweet view into learning one’s sexuality with all the nuances attached. Some parts were a bit dense with gossip and drama, but overall it was very enjoyable.

“Lord we know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

I honestly can't remember the last time I read a YA contemporary novel featuring a queer POC + a discussion of mental health that I enjoyed all the way.

Ophelia After All feels perfect to me.

I read the first five chapters without knowing anything aside from the fact that it has a queer Latinx MC but I breezed through the first ten chapters in one quick sitting.

PSA. Prepare tissue for Chapters 15 and 20

As a found family supremacist, I loved the friends and family dynamics in this novel. The relationship between Ophelia's circle of friends is realistic and even the conflict presented is reasonable. I want to hug Sammie, Agatha, Wesley, Lindsay, and Talia and make them my high school friends as well.

Also, the depiction of Rojas family is the element where I resonated with the most. As the youngest in a family of eight, I feel closest to my mother in the sense that I confess everything about my life to her - which is how Ophelia and her parents are developed in this novel. Even their misunderstanding (which I also experienced in high school after my first breakup) is really relatable. I feel seen as I read Chapter 20 because it felt like I was the main character in that chapter.

"I’ve spent most of my life telling myself I know who I am; a lifeboat of identity in the turbulent waves of growing up. A hopeless romantic, a rose gardener, a chismosa, a girl who falls for every boy who looks her way. I forgot that there are parts of me I’ve yet to discover, versions of me I’ve yet to become."

This book is an immersive contemporary mainly because Ophelia's character as a romantic appealed to me and she definitely pulled me into her story right off the first chapter.

I also liked how the author narrated Ophelia's journey of questioning and her first steps towards finding herself.

Shakespeare references and quotes aside, this is an enjoyable YA contemporary that should be in your to-buy list. Legit this book made me want to read Hamlet!

P. S. Imagine all the bookstagram photos of this book ft. all the gorgeous flower flatlays

What's in this book: Cuban MC, Latinx rep (Spanish-American), supporting cast of queer teens (bisexual, asexual, aromantic, pansexual, questioning)

I highly recommend if you enjoy: You Should See me in a Crown, Perfect on Paper, Sex Education (Netflix show)

Trigger warnings: racism (mentions of), homphobia

RATING: 5stars

I don't really have the words to talk about how much I love this book, but here goes nothing.

I've been following Racquel on twitter for years, so I've seen a lot of the process of making and publishing this book from the outside. And through those years, the hype has been building and building. So when I got accepted for this arc, my hype levels were some of the highest they have ever been. Nothing else has been this hyped in my head. And surprising no one (at least not surprising me), Ophelia After All met and exceeded all previously mentioned hype.

There is something so magical about reading about a girl who thought she had it all figured out, get her whole sexual identity screwed around because she is talking to a pretty girl. Ophelia, we have all been there. This book isn't the "typical" coming out story. Ophelia isn't just discovering her sexuality, but also really coming to terms and discovering who she is and learning she can break the expectations and beliefs that the people around her have put on her. Ophelia After All is the book I wished I had when I was younger and am so thankful queer teens will have now.

SPOILERS START HERE LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS
Ophelia After All also deals with a coming out story in which she doesn't explicitly label her sexuality at the end. And as a person who has questioned her identity for years and still struggles with the wanting to have a label, it was so cathartic to watch her be fine saying she's queer. This is something that we don't see a ton and young queer girls need to see.

Ophelia After All is also SO important for queer kids of color, especially mixed kids. While I am white and can't speak on how accurate the representation is, conversations about the intersectionality of queerness and being a person of color is really prevalent throughout the book. It isn't just a thrown away thing, but something that Ophelia mentions quite frequently and is talked about with her friends as well. I am looking forward to hear QPOC's thoughts.

I also love the fact that basically everyone in Ophelia's friend group is a part of the community at the end. What they say is true, queer people travel in packs, even if they don't know that they're queer.

I gained a lot of knowledge from reading Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie that I had not anticipated.

This book was FULL of beautiful life lessons, not just about love but about the complexities of life at such a young age. It was phenomenal. I constantly caught myself highlighting beautifully written lines to look back at for advice and inspiration. It wasn’t anything I could’ve imagined coming from a rom-com YA book. It felt like a prickly, warm, but comforting hug.

The story follows Ophelia Rojas, a teen girl who’s learning to navigate friendship drama, senior year, and her place in the queer community. The book grapples with the constant struggle of trying to identify yourself when you realize you might not know yourself as well as you think you do. It talks about the people close to you, that knows you better than you know yourself and how that affects you when you are also growing and changing.

“But sometimes, when you’ve known someone for years they build up this image of you, it’s hard to talk about things that mess with that image. It feels like you’d be breaking some bond of trust between you and that person by being different than you were before.” (uncorrected proof)

It touches so accurately on the awkwardness and loud silence in Hispanic cultures when someone comes out as queer and the fact that in most Hispanic families we don’t address queerness, we just brush over it. This was what I loved the absolute most about the book. It was real, it touched on these heavy topics without taking away from the youthful naiveness that being a 17/18 comes with.

It was hilarious, relatable, adorable & beautifully written. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Some quotes I love (from the uncorrected proof, subject to change):

“It’s more than the act of wanting gives us more satisfaction than the actual thing ever will.”

“But all I do is tighten my short ponytail and smile like the periods behind everything I ever thought about myself aren’t slowly being replaced by question marks.”

“What happens when you tell the girls who trust and love you that you realized you sometimes look at them the way they expect boys to? Does everything–every borrowed lipstick and shared dressing room and innocent cheek kiss–become suspect, corrupted by some illusion of straightness?”

A sweet, surprising debut novel with a realistically drawn cast of characters and an attentiveness to its subject matter that bodes well for a promising career--definitely making room for Racquel Marie's upcoming releases on our shelves! Ophelia is a known quantity: solidly in her senior year with the same group of best friends, same close-knit relationship with her parents, same signature fashion sense (all florals, all the time), same slightly-offbeat passion for gardening, and same reputation as a boy-crazy romantic. And yet... with graduation looming, Ophelia knows that things are going to change, for better or for worse, and when she develops a crush on friend-of-a-friend Talia, she starts to wonder if she knows herself as well as she thought she did. As the novel unfolds, Ophelia learns more about herself as well as her friends and family, about sexuality and cultural identity, and about what it means to come into ones true self. All the teenage feelings and vivid friendships of classic Sarah Dessen or Jenny Han with the thoughtful curiosity and effortless diversity of Leah Johnson or Julie Murphy -- Marie tackles big subjects, from homophobia to racism to toxic masculinity without ever delving into after-school-special territory. So many young people will feel seen and heard and represented by this book, and I can't wait to recommend it!

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC.
Ophelia after all is about the main character, Ophelia starting to have new feelings for a girl. Since she’s always been ‘boy-crazy’ she doesn’t know how to deal with these new feelings.
I really liked this book and it’s now one of my favorites! I think the characters are relatable to every teenager confused with their sexuality and identity. I would definitely recommend it to everyone!

This book!!! This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and WOW did it not disappoint. It felt like a warm hug from start to finish and such a joy to read. The cast of characters is lovable, unique and, most importantly, they feel like teenagers. They also feel like people I would want to be friends with. Senior year of high school is SO emotional - fracturing friend groups, ending one, constant part of your life, moving on, etc - and this book took me back to feeling all of those emotions in real time.

I absolutely adored Ophelia and loved learning about her Cuban-American family. Her fear of change was so relatable and following her journey of self-discovery was just what my high school self would have needed.

I can't wait to read more of Marie's books - especially her upcoming Soccer Gays! These are the stories queer kids need and deserve.

Ophelia Rojas is a senior who loves gardening, her best friends, and boys. She is heading into the last part of her senior year when things start to change. Ophelia is struggling to come to terms with what it means to be half Cuban, without living in a Latine community; what it means to be a friend, as her long-time friendships start to change; and perhaps most challenging for Ophelia, her sexuality. As Ophelia struggles, she starts to drift away from the comfortable habits of reaching out to her parents and friends for help, and she tries to handle her questions on her own. What Ophelia learns is that change and growth is an important part of growing up and you don't need to fit into the ideas that others hold for you.

This was so CUTE! Such a sweet and heartfelt little story that I cannot wait to foist on my friends when it’s officially available next year, because so many times throughout this book I kept thinking how different friends of mine would love it. It made me cry a little bit at times and I like how it didn’t necessarily go where I was expecting it to, but it was overall really good!

The only so-called issue I had were occasional overdescriptions/overwriting which I can totally understand in a debut, and the fact that characters sometimes weren’t described until several chapters after they were introduced so I’d have to readjust my mental images multiple times; but if these are my biggest criticisms then that’s a damn solid book, and I really did love this one

This review will be put up in The Wellesley News tonight!

I am about to make this book everybody’s problem, and by problem, I actually mean the solution to all your problems.

I know I’m exaggerating, but I just really, really love this book.

“Ophelia After All” is everything you could possibly want in a queer coming out story. It’s a love letter to queer teens and to love itself in all its forms. It has so much heart and wonder.

Ophelia Rojas thinks she knows exactly who she is. She loves gardening, her friends and her family. She’s a hopeless romantic who’s had way too many crushes on way too many boys. She’s just months away from graduating high school, and she’s happy with her college plans. Everything seems perfect. But lately, she’s had a particular girl on her mind. And that could change everything.

Soon, Ophelia finds herself in a veritable mess, an identity crisis to end all identity crises. She doesn’t know how to talk about this, or even who to talk about it with. She makes mistakes. She learns. She grows.

Coming out is not easy, and it’s even less easy when you’re not quite sure what label even fits you the best. It’s exhausting, and it’s convoluted, and you’ll totally screw it up sometimes. However, as author Racquel Marie makes it clear, it can also be incredibly freeing.

Ophelia spends a lot of time trying to figure herself out. Her high school friend group is fracturing from petty drama, and she’s at the center of a lot of it. But ultimately, these kids love each other.

I have no words for the amount of joy this book gave me, how much I felt seen and how deeply Ophelia’s story resonated with me. We come from very different backgrounds — I’m Chinese, she’s Cuban and Irish — but I felt Ophelia’s struggles with being part of a diaspora, with not quite knowing herself and, even with her complicated, messy relationships with her friends and family.

There are many things I loved about this book. The way that not every character knows how to label themselves, and that’s okay. The way that characters who are bi or pan are shown to be attracted to, and to date, people of all genders, including ones that are not their own. The way that not one, but two characters were on the asexual or aromantic spectrum.

I know you can’t see it, but there are tears clouding my vision as I type this because younger me needed this book so much. To know it’s okay not to slap a label on yourself as soon as you find one that might possibly sound right, but also to know that if you feel a certain way — or don’tto not feel something at all — you’re allowed to do so, and that doesn’t make you less. Of anything.

At the end of the day, if you’re not cis and straight and allo, you are a part of the LGBTQIAP+ community, no matter if you’re sure of a label or not, no matter what letter of the queer acronym that label is, no matter who you decide to (or not to) date. Racquel Marie makes that abundantly clear in this stunning debut novel, and I commend her for it.

I only have about a month left of being a queer teen (I will soon be in my twenties), but I know this story is going to be so incredibly important to queer teens out there. It certainly would have saved me a lot of trouble. Please, please, please read this book. It’s really something.

Also, this book serves as a reminder to treasure your friendships. We all need to hear more of that.

“Ophelia After All” is set to release on Feb. 8, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Feiwel and Friends, in exchange for an honest review, and I think this is the most honest I’ve been in a review thus far.

This book is about a high schooler named Ophelia. Ophelia has a tight-knit friend group and they are all looking forward to prom but there is some drama threatening to fracture the group. In the midst of worrying about what boy she'll take to prom Ophelia begins to have feelings for a female friend, causing her to question how well she knows herself. This is a coming-of-age story about identity that is a good choice for YA readers who like high school romance stories.

There a ton of rave reviews for this book, and I have to admit that I just don't get it. The book was good, the characters were fine, but it didn't stay with me after I read it. None of the characters jumped out as unique or intriguing, and the story line wasn't gripping. I didn't find myself invested in Ophelia's journey of discovery or in the trials and tribulations of the other characters and their romantic entanglements.

I did appreciate the representation found in the cast of characters as well as the issues each character had to deal with regarding race, homophobia, etc.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I didn't expect to love this but I did?

Not your average YA queer romance - more a story about a highschooler learning to fall in love with herself, and about the various ways that friendship shows up.

Fun, great cast of characters and characterization, light, funny, touching, doesn't translate all the non-English conversation and never italicizes it. What's not to love?

This book is super gay and I love it! I think high school drama and hormones are captured perfectly through the friendship dynamics in the book. I found the theme of the internal battle between being who everyone expects you/knows you to be and who you are discovering you truly are to be extremely powerful and well executed. I would highly recommend to all folks who are discovering and exploring parts of themselves, especially young folks. I would totally read a sequel/companion following the main character's next journey.

Ophelia After All is perhaps the most unique, and DEFINITELY the best young adult novel I've ever read. A joy to read from start to finish, Racquel Marie captures a sweet, lovable and unique cast of characters that felt so realistic to me I was longing to join their group. It takes a LOT to make me feel the same way I felt while reading Red White and Royal Blue (which is my favorite novel in terms of character writing) but this novel 1000% did that.

This novel follows Ophelia, a botany-lover proclaimed "boy-crazy" girl on her journey of questioning her sexuality and navigating the world that is teenage romance during Prom season. From developing a clumsy crush on a girl to having bursts of romantic feelings for fleeting boys, Ophelia's fully confused with her identity. She builds connections with very 3 dimensional characters that become a support (or lack of support) system while hiding her secret from her parents and her long-tie friends for fear of letting their version of Ophelia be tarnished.

I loved the way the author handled Ophelia's sexuality crisis. The author shows how it's a messy, non-linear process that doesn't always have stereotypical journeys and outcomes. Ophelia spends a lot of time bonding with and learning the stories of Queer people in & associated with people in her life, which creates a support system many do not have during the questioning phase, which I loved to read.

As for the specific characters AHH I loved so many of them but in particular: Wesley, Sammie, Talia, Agatha and Ophelia's parents (so, pretty much every character). They all had distinct characterizations and backstories lending to a more fully fleshed and realistic world than many books provide, which was *so* good. Ophelia's parents have complicated lives which sometimes make Ophelia's life harder, especially when she holds blame in those complications. Her best friend Sammie and Wesley are competing in a love triangle for a girl who may hold less feelings than either of them.

The friendship dynamics behind this group were also SO much more realistic than the typical YA book. Their friend group deals with the merging of two smaller groups, a love triangle, a bid for prom queen, the structure of popularity, and the knowledge that when they graduate in the Spring, some of them will likely cease to be friends. As somebody who just graduated high school last year, I've never read a book that deals with the complicated, fraught nature that is a senior year friend group. My personal experience of knowing that in a few short months I likely was going to fade from the lives of some of those who I was closest to was hard to grapple with, but also a sort of peaceful acceptance feeling of "thank god." Ophelia and her group definitely see some of these issues, especially after the growing pains of being such lifelong friends.

Ophelia After All also provides a lot of cultural depth, from her Cuban-American background to the diversity of her friend group offering many fresh perspectives that are generally underrepresented in literature. As a white person I'm not going to speak on if the different racial and ethnic representations were good or bad, since I lack that perspective: I will say if you're looking for a book with lots of diverse character backgrounds, this one has it!

Overall, there is so much I could say about this book that I can't even put into words, and I'll be coming back to this review probably daily to edit it.. BUT I just want to say this is my new favorite YA book ever. Perhaps it's because the author is so young, and so many YA authors are a bit older (no shade) and are. bit out of touch with what being a teenager is like now... but this book is so golden. SO f*cking golden and I'm not going to shut up about it ever.

THANK YOU to Macmillan for the ARC💋 Get excited for this one y'all!!!!