Before I review this, I think we need to take a minute and appreciate that cover. Look at it! I'm absolutely in love with all the roses.

Continuing on, Ophelia After All was an absolute gem, and I'm very grateful to have received a copy. The emotions that Ophelia had felt real and genuine and true, and she was a really fleshed-out character. There were character flaws, and that helped to make her feel more like a real person rather than just a 2-dimensional character.

All of the characters, in fact, felt very genuine. I grew to love all of Ophelia's friend group - even the characters I was on the fence about in the beginning. The representation of different levels of friendship was also very nice to see - they weren't all besties by any means, and you really got to see everyone's relationships grow.

I think the thing that made me fall in love with Ophelia After All the most, though, was the storyline and plot. It just felt so incredibly real and authentic. The way Ophelia begins to question and learn about her sexuality and the struggles that she goes through didn't feel like they had just been thrown in for brownie points, and that truly made for a great story. I won't give any spoilers, but I will say that I absolutely loved how the story ended, it wasn't what I had been expecting.

Overall, I think this was an excellent debut, and that stories like this need to be considered the bar YA contemporaries strive to reach!

Ophelia After All was a stunning coming-of-age contemporary, focused on Ophelia Rojas, a high school senior with a passion for gardening, and her relationships (with her friends, with her family, and with romantic interests). This book was full of heart and passion and was full of queer rep.

The author perfectly captured the realizing you're not-straight/coming out experience, from being too shy to even label yourself or say out loud that you might like girls to being able to accept that coming out wasn't the worst thing ever and you might in fact be prepared to do it once or twice or ten thousand more times in your life.

I will say one of the negatives of this book (not enough to really affect my reading, but enough to annoy me) was Lindsay's character. She was constantly being abrasive to Ophelia, and while Ophelia and crew accepted this, I found it obnoxious.

By the end, I had tears streaming down my face. I love love loved this book so much and cannot wait to recommend it to everyone I know. This isn't just for fans of YA, this is for anyone who questioned themselves or tried to figure out who they were. I hope so many teen girls love this book and I hope it stays with them as it did me.

This was a great debut for the author and I look forward to her other books.

Thank you to Feiwel & Friends, Racquel Marie, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is one of my favorite reads of 2022. Now, is it February 1st? Yes. However. This book’s got everything you want in a YA novel:
1) Incredible characterization
2) The voice! Excellent use of voice!
3) It’s here, it’s queer, it’s fantastique
4) Also the main character is a botanist and really intensely into roses and I’ve never been more delighted about this??

This book is like the experience of reading a really really good short story in a Dahlia Adler anthology and then it goes on for the FULL NOVEL EXPERIENCE. I’m in love with this book. Five stars.

This book is for you if you like messy, complicated stories, if you want great questioning rep, if you want an amazing friend group, and if you're in the mood for a coming-of-age contemporary that's really focused on figuring yourself out instead of a romance-focused story. The characters in this book felt so real.

I am a mess. In the best way, of course.
Ophelia After All is the coming of age story I wish I had when I was fourteen. When I was trying to figure out myself, like Ophelia did. But I have it now, and I can see myself both present and past in this book. It gives me hope, joy, and a whole bunch of tears. It's the queer coming of age story we've needed for a really long time, now.

Our cast of characters is diverse, unique, and have amazing character development--both as individuals and as a group. You come to love this crew and all their ins and outs.
Ophelia, Agatha, Lindsay, Talia, Sammie, Wesley, and Zaq. It's a big cast, but you'll love all of them.

The writing is easy to fall into, once I was a couple chapters in, I couldn't stop reading. Ophelia's narration feels like Racquel Marie CRAWLED into my head and took everything I've doubted or thought about myself, or others, over the past few years. Very few authors has succeeded in putting who I am on page and feeling fully, truly represented.

If you love Alice Oseman books, or books driven by friendship, first love, and rediscovering yourself, this is the book for you. This is a book I've been waiting for forever. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about it ever.

4 stars

Refreshingly honest and heartfelt, Racquel Marie's YA debut Ophelia After All does not shy away from taking her readers on an emotional journey as we watch our protagonist begin to discover her sexuality. It is often hard to watch Ophelia reckon with her truth, especially as she navigates the end of senior year and the inevitable fracturing that her friend group begins to undertake as they look towards college.

However, while there is despair, anger, and hurt, there is also an abundance of joy. Marie is careful to balance tough conversations about the complicated process of coming out with the utter happiness that comes with recognizing and becoming who you truly are. I might be more than a few years removed from the roller coaster of feelings that is the high school experience, but Ophelia After All thrust me right back into its messy glory. And you know what? I'm thankful that it did.

Thank you to Feiwel and Friends for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Ophelia After All is a beautiful coming of age story about Ophelia, a Latinx teenager on her journey of finding herself and understanding her sexuality. It was incredible to watch her slowly become more comfortable with herself and grow throughout the course of this story. This book really captured the challenges of being a senior of high school - learning who you are, wanting to hold on to the people and experiences around you, and being excited and terrified of change at the same time. There are so many aspects of Ophelia's feelings and journey that so many people will be able to relate to. In addition, Ophelia's group of friends were all so unique and added so much to the story - an added bonus is that they were a diverse group both in terms of race and sexual identity.

This was one of the most realistic and relatable coming of age YA stories I've read in a long time. This one is beautiful and worth picking up!

I am heads over heels in love with Ophelia After All. It's a story that navigates friendships which seem rock solid, until they aren't. About all the ways we deny, lie, make mistakes, and utter fragile things which crumble with any weight. While I was prepared to love Ophelia's queer questioning journey the most, I ended up just unequivocally falling in love with Ophelia. She's struggling to undo the heteronormativity. Making mistakes in the messy ways we do when the version of ourselves we are disappears.

Marie's debut is about love and loss. It's about how coming out can feel like you're losing a piece of yourself, while also finding another. How there are cracks in our realities and the journey to find the courage to pull it apart at the seams. Ophelia not only confronts her questioning, but also the way things fall apart because of fault lines and tensions, secrets and denials. There are relationships which will weather the storm. Which dig their roots in and preserve, and then there are weeds.

Thank you Netgalley & publisher for this e ARC of Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie.

This was a really sweet YA story about discovering attraction and sexuality and coming out at the end of High school. This was a fun fast to read YA contemporary diverse LGBTQ+ read. I loved the MC was Latina too.

About: A teen girl navigates friendship drama, the end of high school, and discovering her queerness in Ophelia After All, a hilarious and heartfelt contemporary YA debut.... Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she's always imagined or upending everyone's expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.

I highly recommend to those who love YA reads. 4*+

YA contemporary, YA romance, Latina YA, LGBTQ+!

Very fun and such diverse representation. Every character was so endearing and I really found myself rooting for all of their happy endings.
That said, I do think the pacing of this book was a little slow, and the last 50 pages felt like Return of the King levels of endless endings. Every other paragraph felt like it could be the cheesy, on the nose reflection of an ending, but it just kept going!
But the diversity was great, the characters fun, and I will definitely recc to my students. I think there are a lot of kids not used to identifying with the characters they read that would love these characters!

This was an amazing queer coming of age story that I think so many young people will be able to relate to! This book jumps straight in with a lot of characters and a lot of teenage drama which I live for! Ophelia is a really interesting character and I loved reading about her journey with her sexuality. It isn’t a linear path but I loved how she was able to bond with other queer characters in the book because it created a support system for her. And the side characters were all interesting and had such different personalities!!! I would read a book about any of them. I especially loved Wesley and Agatha!

This is an own-voice story and I loved that the author was able to include some of her own experiences like Ophelia’s love for her family. There was also a lot of different representation including characters who were bisexual, pansexual, biromantic, aromantic, Latine, and plus size.

Ophelia After All is an entertaining and heartfelt YA novel that I would recommend to everyone, especially if you’re looking for a diverse queer coming of age story!

“‘Because I love you whether you love Romeos or Juliets or both or neither or live out the rest of your days with Dad and me and your garden. … That is the legacy I want for you, not to be the girl who loves too much, but to be the girl who is loved more than enough.’”⁣⁣
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𝘖𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭 by 𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐞⁣⁣
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆⁣⁣
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As I’ve gotten older, the Contemporary YA genre has become a little bit painful for me to read at times, just because I am old now and can’t relate to high school drama. 😅 But throw some LGBTQIAP+ themes into that Contemporary YA novel, and 𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐓.⁣⁣
⁣⁣
𝘖𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭 is an incredibly beautiful and moving coming-of-age story of exploring identity and accepting the sometimes painful fact that you simply can’t live up to everyone’s expectations of you.⁣⁣
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Not to mention, it’s full of wonderful 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞 references and quotes and sprinkled with glimpses of 𝐎𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚’𝐬 Cuban heritage. This book really gives you perspective on how scary coming out is/can be, especially in as terrifying a place as high school. One of the passages that really stuck with me is when 𝐎𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚 says she worries that, if people know she likes girls and boys, her female friends won’t want to have sleepovers with her anymore, and her male friends will fetishize her.⁣⁣
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Which brings me to my next point. Books like 𝘖𝘱𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘭𝘭 are 𝐒𝐎 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓 to share with everyone in your life, but especially the teens and adolescents in your life.

This book pulverized my heart in the best way. Ophelia's story is so touching and deeply personal, her worries so valid and true for a young teen that's experiencing what she is. I really appreciated the attention to detail in the entire cast of characters, each their own person with their own set of flaws and their own positive sides. The themes of exploration of the future and finding your place in the world and how you're perceived were well done and relevant, and the voice is rich and authentic. A wonderful debut from a truly talented author.

This was such an emotional powerhouse of a book and it took my by such surprise.

As someone who’s been following Racquel Marie for some time, I was so excited when she announced that this book was going to be published. I knew how much this book meant to her and I should have expected it to be as open and honest as she is.

Ophelia After All is a true coming of age story, where our main character, Ophelia Rojas, finds herself at the end of her senior year of high school. She feels secure in herself, and her friends and family openly tease her about how Ophelia is reliable is regarding her love of her rose garden, Cuban food, and her endless stream of crushes on boys.

But what happens when Ophelia finds herself having feelings for a girl? She starts to question her place in her group of friends, how they see her, and how she sees herself.

As into this book as I was in the second half, it was a little slow for me to start. I can’t exactly quite place what it was that didn’t grab me, but I can tell you the turning point for me was when things started to… not be as expected. The moment exactly was at a party at Ophelia’s mother’s job. Once Ophelia started to embrace what she was feeling, I found myself more sucked into the story.

This book is one that should find its way in to the hands of teens, especially those who relate to Ophelia in any way. It will remind them that it’s okay to change, to go outside of the norm that your friends and family have assumed of you, that it’s never too late to discover something new about yourself. This is one of those books that I think would have helped a lot of people if they had had it when they were teens, myself included.

Racquel Marie really sets the emotional bar with this book. I can’t wait to read what’s next.

4.5 stars rounded down.

I’m usually not one to seek out BookTuber books because I think there’s always going to be a sense of bias on either end of the spectrum. Either the book receives glowing praise from the author’s friends within the online community, or it’s dragged to filth by people in that same community looking for easy clickbait. But Ophelia After All, the YA contemporary debut novel from Racquel Marie, was getting so much buzz I could feel my own interest around it growing, despite it being a genre I tend to avoid. The idea of a hopeless romantic coming to terms with her own sexuality her senior year of high school seemed like something totally different from the other poorly panned Booktuber debut novels. And I hadn’t watched any of Racquel’s videos, leaving me feeling like I could go into this book without any kind of expectations.

I think where this book does shine is in its POV character - Ophelia herself. I will admit that based on the synopsis this book ended up going in a completely different direction than I expected, in a way I totally respect. Racquel paints a very believable narrative around a teenage crush and a girl trying to understand her own sexuality as it relates to this crush. Outside of the romance here, Ophelia’s relationship with her friend Lindsay and her grudging understanding of “friends by proxy but I probably won’t speak to you after high school” rang completely true as well. So the character work was truly great, even if it didn’t love how everything here kept circling back to who was going to ask who to be their date to an overpriced high school dance.

My hangup with this book really does begin and end with its reliance on one very critical plot point - prom. As someone who lived through the American public school system, prom, and the minimal fanfare that accompanied it, I will never understand why this event is so sensationalized in books and other media. It’s approaching date is used here as a catalyst for every major event in the book - fights, misunderstandings, makeups, and breakups. And maybe my friend group was just very uninterested in every aspect of this single day in a high school career, but I never felt this kind of pressure. Altogether, this made it very difficult to connect with a lot of what was happening around Ophelia, even as a lookback on my own time in this age demographic. I just wish something else could have been the driving force here for Ophelia’s journey.

Overall, I am so very happy this book exists for a generation of young adults who may be questioning their own sexuality and how this may impact the relationship with their friends and family around them. I thought I personally would connect with this more, but I think YA contemporary is still a genre too far outside my lived experiences right now to ever fully immerse myself in. So all in all, a strong debut that while I don’t feel has broad appeal across age demographics, has a universal and much-needed message about the sometimes tumultuous path towards embracing your own sexuality.

Thank you, NetGalley, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, and Feiwel & Friends, for the ARC.

Ophelia Rojas is balancing all that comes with being a senior in HS: friendships, looming prom and graduation, and budding romance. In her case, an unexpected crush that breaks the mold of her boy-crazy reputation has her questioning all she knows about herself and what's expected of her.

This book is typical YA in a lot of ways - it has the teen angst and drama prevalent within the genre. BUT this book is not at all a cut or copy of anything I've read in the genre lately. As a debut, this book has an endearing heart and openness that keep the reader rooting for Ophelia to find her way.

Though I've mostly moved away from YA, I really enjoyed diving into this story and meeting these characters. I look forward to future work from the author and expect this novel to end up on many "best of" lists for 2022.

This book is so important and let me tell you why. Ophelia After All is a coming-of-age story about coming out while coming into who you are.

I'll be honest, I'm not typically a fan of books based in high school, but Ophelia and her gang hit different. As someone who has been out of that world for a little over a decade now (wow, that makes me feel ancient), I was surprised at how painless it was to get back into the headspace of love triangles, raging hormones, and intricate prom-posals that sometimes outdo actual marriage proposals.

High school is already one of the most emotionally challenging stages of life, and I can tell you from personal experience that the last few months are especially precarious. Friendships are ending, relationships are changing, and there's a whole world of possibility ahead of you that's, at times, both thrilling and downright terrifying. Raquel Marie does an outstanding job of portraying that fear - not just fear of change in the world around you but changes in yourself as well.

Lucky for Ophelia and her friends, they seem to have a level of emotional intelligence that I desperately wish I had back in high school. There were times when I was watching the characters navigate the treacherous waters of identity and sexuality, and a small part of me was so envious when they could identify words that rightfully expressed what they were feeling, all while bantering away with jokes and puns.

But that's just the thing - I read this book with hindsight bias, thinking about what I could have done or what I should have done. While that was a gift in and of itself, I wasn't the recipient of this particular love letter. If this book were wrapped up as a present, pretty bow and all, the "To:" would be followed by all the young adults struggling to find out who they are and what they want. The actual gift the story provides, the answer to all their looming questions, is that there is no answer. More importantly, they don't need an answer; the gift box is empty. While some undoubtedly can't see past the negativity of that visualization, what it represents is immense: possibility and open space that you can fill with whatever you want.

As far as the actual writing goes, each character was written so colorfully, all with their own merits and flaws that distinguished them as individuals - much like Ophelia's gorgeous roses. However, while I loved looking through Ophelia's rose-tinted eyes, I would have enjoyed more insight into the thoughts and feelings of the others. There were small moments that felt a little hastily thrown in that I think unintentionally tokenized some of the rep for the sake of inclusion. I don't at all hold this against the book because it's Ophelia's story at the end of the day, but I think giving them a higher base to stand on would have given those characters more of a voice.

That said, I don't think it takes away from the overall message the book delivers. Ophelia After All is still very much a triumph of diversity and queer representation that serves as an open-ended promise that just because you haven't figured out where to point your compass, that doesn't mean you never will.

Thank you, NetGalley, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, and Feiwel & Friends, for the ARC!

Link to Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4509442404

I adored this book. I had me hooked from the epigraph. Ophelia is a strong and relatable character that everyone will enjoy. Some of the minor characters were maybe not as strong or distinguishable. It is not a very plot heavy book and at times could feel a little one note, the “action” comes from the back half of the book once characters start to open up about their identities. I wish that had come sooner so we could have seen the full range and depth of these characters. However, the representation and the exploration of love both romantically and platonically was done with so well and with so much intention. And something I have not seen done well in a YA book.

The symbolism came on a little strong but I also love the idea of this book being taught in English classes. The teenage angst was a fun walk down memory lane of my own high school experience and I wish this book was out when I was younger. These characters and their prom experience is something many queer kids will want. This book will provide a map from many queer and questions kids like Ophelia for years to come. A must read in 2022.

I have been keeping my eye on this book for SOOOO long. I watched Blonde With a Book regularly and knew she was writing a book (could possibly be from Twitter but I don't use it anymore so who knows). Racquel's book reviews were fantastic and I was excited for the premise of her novel. When I saw it on Netgalley, I immediately requested and was hoping to get my hands on it with my dismal ratio from requesting too many books forever ago when I joined Netgalley. I was happy to receive an eARC. The cover is entirely too gorgeous and perfectly unique.

This follows the story of Ophelia, a boy-crazy avid rose gardener senior in high school, who may or may not have a crush on a girl. The story follows her senior year and her working through questioning, as well as all the drama amongst her friend group. It took me a little bit to get a hold of all the characters because they are introduced very quickly in pairs and also referred to by their nicknames. But once I got a hold on that, I was fine. I, as always, love when the families are present in YA books and parents are present. I love Ophelia's parents. This story did have a lot of conflict throughout it and that kept it very intriguing and I wanted to see it get resolved. I think it would make for a really good mini series. I love all of the representation too.

I enjoyed this book! It was a quick, and fun read. I feel like it's a book a lot of baby gay high schoolers would love. It's got great diversity, so I think everyone would relate to something in the book. That's something I really appreciated in the book. There was an asexual character, an aromantic character, and so many more identities. Another aspect I liked was that Ophelia didn't get the girl at the end. And she wasn't super mad or sad about it. I thought it was really realistic, considering they're just in high school and they didn't get to meet new people yet.
Although this book was enjoyable, the plot felt a little slow for me in some parts.
However, I'm glad I stuck till the end because the ending was really cute. It was like the end of a coming-of-age movie. Really nostalgic.