4.5
Super enjoyable and very unique! I can’t wait to chat with the author on the 23rd. A perfect kick off to pride month

Super cute concept with great rep (enby rep!), but messy execution. Just felt, in places, like it needed to pare down its narrative and keep things simple, because just as soon as a major conflict was resolved, new relationship drama would pop up that just gave me whiplash, and, overall, it was just doing a little too much. Just started to feel overly long, repetitive, and soapy.

I really appreciated the ending, which justified a lot of the sweet summer 16-year-old melodrama, but then it was immediately undermined by a short epilogue that felt very tacked on, so that was odd.

I love the detail that Jason wrote into the mermaid characters. Their tales are so cool, the way they show emotion and interact with other mermaids was a very interesting take.

I really thought the ending would go another way but I am glad it didn't. I loved the ending there was some real growth shown by both characters.

Can't wait to read more from Jason June in the future.

I really adore this book. It is cute and romantic and funny with just that little twist to it. It gave me all the vibes I liked about Heartstopper.

While there were many things that I enjoyed about this book, it did have issues. First and foremost, a lot of this book reads like it’s middle grade. However, this is NOT a middle grade book. This is young adult through and through. This book contains strong language and sexual situations. The middle grade aspects come with the merfolk discussion. The was the merfolk was presented and the way they talk just screams middle grade.

The story itself was cute as hell. I found myself grinning throughout. The ending was rushed and some of the character choices just seemed “meh.”

I do appreciate this story so much. I just wasn’t sure what it was trying to be at times.

I really liked the concept of this book and was very excited to read it, but ended up a bit disappointed. I wasn’t a huge fan of how Sean and Crest interacted with each other as they both seemed extremely focussed on their own goals and problems, even after they both came to their revelations about their situations. It also seemed like almost all of the characters didn’t have much depth to them, and oftentimes I wanted to get more out of a scene or moment than we got. I liked the ideas behind this book, but in my opinion, it felt anticlimactic and didn’t capitalize on its potential.

I really enjoyed this rom-com style story about a mermaid (mer) and human falling in love. June does a wonderful job by giving us just enough background on the mer living in the Blue (ocean), and why this particular mer, Crest/Ross, is up on land attempting to help a human win his boyfriend back. Of course hijinks ensue and Ross realizes they are head over fin in love with this human, Sean. Here's the problem though, Ross has a choice to either stay on land as a human forever or go back to the Blue to live out their life with their fellow mer.

Fun story that gets a bit repetitive at times. It either needed an extra plot point or to be trimmed a few dozen pages. Between this and Robby Weber's If You Change Your Mind, we are spoiled with rom-com themed YA books this summer! I hope you'll check it out.

As much as I would like to give it more stars (a perfect 5 even) because the writing was done well, the diverse representations and the situations these teenagers were put through were also done well (and handled well, i must add) i could only give it 3 stars bec i felt immense disappointment in the ending.

I won't act like I know better than the author, because I've also been thinking about it and there's no other better ending than the ending they gave it - both protagonists, as well as supporting characters, didn't act out of character, and their development truly felt genuine, so I acknowledge that.

However, this book has been heavily marketed as YA romance, and what is the one thing the romance genre requires? HEA/HFN . And this book didn't deliver that.

I was so engrossed with the story, the superb writing, and I was at the edge of my seat waiting for the brilliant way for Sean and Crest to end up together, but they don't.

So there. If you're okay with investing a ton of emotions on all of the great love scenes and then ending with a non-HEA, then go for this, I will gladly recommend. But the romance reader in me felt so betrayed so there's that too.

An excellent start to June and a perfect way to end Mer-May. This is heartwarming and the right levels of rom-com action. Also, I just loved the way the characters balanced each other out? It just felt really practical. I have to back for June's debut now.

This is a perfect summer read. The merfolk magic system, was cool, and interesting. I did find it to be rather vague, and would've loved to learn more about it. I did enjoy the both of the point of views, I defiently preferred Sean's point of view though. The plot was fast paced and fun, and the whole fake dating plot was very well done in my opinion.
I did knock this down a star, because I constantly felt like the books language was dumbed down, and I wasn't a huge fan of the ending.

Overall I found this book alright, and would recommend it to anyone looking for the perfect summer read!

Out of the Blue is a heartwarming, coming of age story that follows two MCs: Crest/Ross - a nonbinary Mer whose time has come to embark upon the Journey (help a human and live as a human for one moon cycle before they can return back to a life in the sea) and Sean - a fat, gay male who is obsessed with romance but is currently nursing one heck of a broken heart.

Now, I want to make it clear that this book won’t be for everyone and that is largely due to both Ross and Sean being absolute disasters and so ridiculously messy. But I think that’s what makes this book so charming.

Both Ross and Sean are navigating how they fit into the world and also battling against expectations that other people have of them. There’s fake dating, lots of assumptions and miscommunication, swoon worthy moments, messiness, and figuring out what each one needs in life.

The queer rep in this book is really fantastic. Not only do we have great main characters, but the side characters were fascinating and fully fleshed out as well. Kavya was my favorite side character, and I would love to revisit this world with Kavya as a main character since her backstory and moms are so intriguing.

Out of the Blue was a fun and endearing YA novel perfect for reading pool-side this summer! It's got some wonderful queer representation (bi, gay, non-binary), and the story was fun and quick-paced. The ending was quite satisfying, as it's a happy ending you hope for but don't necessarily think will happen and doesn't read as an unrealistic choice for the teenage cast to make.

the story really caught my eye the first time i saw it! I liked the mermaid factor, as well as one of my fav tropes ~ fake dating!! I really liked Crest/Ross as a character, i flicking loved him (yk if yk)! He was fun to read about and really liked how simple things complicated him ~ it just felt something out the box!

I liked the plot which was handled well by the author throughout the book ~ it wasn't lacking and the characters felt like humans (i loved Kavya too)!!

Though Sean just felt so naive at beginning, all the lists and stuff ~ yup it was dreamy! But as a rom com fan myself, i didn't quite really connect with Sean. Especially when he wanted D back so badly... it just felt pitiful at some point.

All in all i enjoyed the story and would recommend!

♡ thanks to @tbrbeyondtours as well as @netgalley for the copy!

Part of your world …
If I had to describe Jason June as an author in one word, it would be “fun.” In Out of the Blue, he created a fantasy world so out there, it 180ed into believable. Moreover, this book is funny — LOL to yourself funny. I couldn’t put it down; I finished it in one day, reading during every single break I had.

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Crest’s quirks, gruffness and overall misunderstandings of the human world simultaneously inject this story with unending joy and pathos. Out of the Blue is like The Little Mermaid meets Pinocchio meets all the queer joy 🌈 .

As with any YA novel, teenagers are gonna teenage, so there were a few moments I wanted to throw my Kindle down, but once I regained composure, I realized it all works. The little pod these kids live in, where their friend relationships are more important to them until their parental relationships are threatened is very real.

I love how body- and sex-positive Jason June’s work is. Horny teens gonna horny. So, that being said, if you’re on the sex-repulsed side, just bear in mind that Out of the Blue may not be for you.

Deep-sea exploration
In so many ways, Out of the Blue is an easy-breezy beach read, but bubbling under the surface are much more complex ideas. These ideas are mostly represented in contrasts. For the sake of brevity, I’ll dive into just two of them.

The one that fascinated me the most, probably because I wasn’t expecting it, was the examination of individualistic versus collectivist cultures. Jason June sets that contrast using Hollywood — a real, but mythical culture — and mer culture — a completely fantastical one. By doing so, she is more easily able to look at these value systems without passing judgment. Just 🧑‍🍳💋

The other thing topic I want to discuss is how gender and sexuality are treated in mer culture. Mers (and all non-human animals, apparently) use they/them pronouns and are what we humans would describe as nonbinary. They go with the flow and fall in love with who they fall in love with; some are polyamorous, others serial monogamists and some partner with one mer for life.

RELATED: 17 New LGBTQIA+ Books You Should Read for Pride

So, Crest has mixed feelings about the ocean giving them an ” ‘eel’ between their legs” and being read as male. Compare that with Sean’s understanding of his own gender and sexuality. Sean is confident that he’s a gay man, yet with no crisis of identity, enters a relationship with a nonbinary person. Clearly attraction and identity are more complex than our human labels.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc6t_grL1_p/

Should you read it?
Shell yes! Now, I loved Jason June’s debut, Jay’s Gay Agenda, but I adored Out of the Blue. For all that it’s fantasy, it’s an incredibly real take on the shelf life of teen romance. Crest in particular is really well drawn. I would love to revisit their world in a sequel!

All in all, Out of the Blue is such a unique blend of urban fantasy veering towards high fantasy. I think you’ll fall in love with this book and these characters as much as I did.

Content warnings: cheating, mild violence, misgendering.

Out of the Blue is out May 31. Pick up a copy at your local indie bookstore or library. Also, in an effort to fight against the growing tide of book banning in the US, Jason June helped set up a donation drive for this book. Find out more here. 🧜 📚

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When a mer reaches sixteen, they have to go on a journey to help a human. It is Crest’s turn, or Ross as they go by on land, and they find more than they were anticipating. Will they stay and live as a human or will they go back to the Blue and live their life as a mer?

In Los Angeles, Sean is a human who is in highschool. He is dealing with a two-timing boyfriend on top of all of the stress from the swim team and now he has to save someone from drowning at the local beach. What next? He finds a real-life merperson?

First, I would like to say that I absolutely adored this story, the writing style, and the characters. The world building for the merfolk is fun, exciting, and June puts their own spin on it and as a bonus it is great representation for the Queer community!

I know you are not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but the artwork for this title is absolutely beautiful! I love the colors, the lineart is so clean, and the way the artist really makes it look like Ross’s tail and Sean’s leg are submerged is perfect!

Overall, great book. It would probably be best suited for older teens because of a very tasteful spicy scene toward the end. If you are a fan of LGBTQAI+ books, like mermaids, or just want to try something new, this book is for you!

If you liked Bloom by Kevin Panetta or The Gentleman’s Guide to
Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee, you will like this book!

there's something truly wonderful about fake dating tropes that grips me, but it was OUT OF THE BLUE as a whole that made me love it -- for its diverse rep (FAT POS REP, HELL YES!) and all its queerdo mermaids. and there are non-binary characters in this book which make me feel seen as a non-binary person. the fat-pos rep is incredibly positive and seeing that on the cover made me feel amazing. i adored crest/ross and sean as the main characters (although their relationship was slightly frustrating in terms of how it went from one opposite to the other), but overall, i think it was executed fairly well.

4/5 stars -- definitely recommend this!

I don't know how I feel about this book tbh... Like I genuinely don't know what to rate it.

It made me cry multiple times, which is great obviously, and I really liked the ending! But I also didn't like all of the miscommunication issues that were going on and the way some of the characters acted in certain situations... Like I get that they are pretty much all teenagers, so we should expect some drama but still.

Anyway like I said I don't know what exactly to rate this, but I think a solid 3.75 stars should be good. Really liked the representation and the way all the emotional stuff was handled! Can't wait to see what I think of the authors other book!

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the ARC of this book.
(Also this review is a bit of a mess because I'm in a lot of pain right now, so yeah sorry about that.)

I really wanted to enjoy this book. It seemed to have everything going for it in regards to what I normally enjoy in my reads: fantasy elements (mer), coming of age, fake dating, LGBTQ+ rep, non-binary character as a lead. I honestly didn't think this would flop for me but there are several reasons why it did.

First: the strengths of this book. The premise itself is a strong one: Mer must spend one month out of the ocean, living among humans with their goal to help a human and earn their right to return to the Blue. It's interesting enough that it's obvious why it would draw readers in on the premise alone. I honestly would have loved to see more of the Mer and their world beyond what we get from Crest/Ross and the pedestal they tend to hold it up on. The characters were also a delight on their own, and I enjoyed them. There is a diversity among the characters that should be celebrated, simply because June does a fantastic job of working that diversity in as part of the normal lived experience.

But premise and characters alone do not a strong read make, and the flaws (for me) were numerous. Now, I know as an adult, I am not the target audience for YA, so not everything will land, but I read most novels with my students in mind and with the goal of finding books I can reasonably put on my shelves for them. I would be hard-pressed to do so with Out of the Blue simply because it seems to suffer from an identity crisis. The fantasy elements lend themselves to more of an upper-middle feel, but at the same time, the scenes leading up to the fade to black read more mature than a YA book often does to the point where I felt they were often misplaced and it took me out of the experience. And while I can appreciate June's highlighting of consent and having those conversations very much centered, it still reads very much as physicality=romance=love and that's where the romance fell flat for me.

Outside of the general tone shifting issue, the plot itself simply did not land for me. I went in knowing that there would be a month for everything to happen and wrap up, so I was expecting some areas to feel rushed, but ultimately a lot of it felt too quick for me. The initial build-up for everything was roughly the first half of the book to get into the crux of the whole fake-dating trope, in which there were several sweet moments, but then the last 30% seemed to be one drama after the next. Yes, with teens, this happens often, but reading through it, as an audience, I wanted some breathers in between. It was a bit of whiplash from one event to the next and it was kind of hard to keep pace with it all. I feel like one or two moments would have been better as a centering focus, and would have allowed for some breathing room with the potential of another sweet moment or two. The pacing just didn't really seem to work.

Sean and Ross (Crest) are each on their own journeys of self-discovery, with the time for their paths to permanently diverge quickly approaching, will the past 30 days they spent together be enough to win out over all the odds stacked against them?

I actually really enjoyed this book. I was a little skeptical going into it because I wasn't the biggest fan of Jay's Gay Agenda, but I really like most of what Jason June did in this story. The characters were well developed and the story was engaging. We had a fake-dating trope mixed with some friends to lovers (friends with benefits?) leading to some interesting issues our characters had to solve.

I also wanted to mention something similar I noticed between Jay's Gay Agenda and Out of the Blue that I liked, and that was how sex positive they both were. I appreciate more YA authors spreading the message: there ain't no shame in the sex game. And June's two books definitely cater to that. Also, can't say I'll forget the term 'stiffening eel' ever in my life!

Out of the Blue by Jason June is a sweet, messy and magical rom-com that is perfect for summer. It follows Sean and Crest (Ross on land). Sean has gone through a bad breakup and Crest in on a monthlong journey that all merfolk take, where they learn about humans and have to help one in some way. Crest helps Sean by fake dating him and making his ex-jealous. I'm sure you can guess what happens from there.

First of all, Jason June's books are effortlessly joyful and relatable. Both books I've read by them are extremely sex and body positive, and make me laugh out loud. Sean is plus sized, but always, always seen as desirable, which was such a treat. I also like how open about sex these characters are, although I could do without the details of mermaid sex ("scaling"). I also love the beachy, summery, Aquamarine vibes this gives off. I loved the romance a lot. My biggest issues come towards the end of the story, where we learn about the dumb and easily preventable mistakes every main character makes. It was honestly painful to read at points. Still, these characters learn from their mistakes and did their best to clean up their messes.

Overall, this is a 3.5 star read. I think its so fun, and I think Jason June's writing is delightful. This is a perfect summer read. And, as a bonus, the cover is gorgeous!