An exploration of queer love and friendship, Old Enough is a truly beautiful debut novel by Haley Jakobson. I have never read a book that captures the pain of a friendship breakup so well.

I just absolutely love books like this!! Give me a messy protagonist figuring herself out, making bad choices and learning and moving on and failing and learning and not learning and making friends and losing them. yes yes yes.

Loved this book! Jakobson's writing of Sav's friend group is amazing and it reminded me of Casey McQuiston and I always fall in love with the group of friends.

Old Enough by Haley Jakobson is the story of Sav's coming of age and learning who she is in the midst of her friend's engagement. I appreciated the clear sense of searching from Sav as well as the setting of a college campus. I think many young people will resonate with this book and I enjoyed getting to experience the emotional lives of these young adults.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of Old Enough in exchange for an honest review. Old Enough is available now.

A unapologetic and powerful coming of age story for 2023. Despite it's serious and difficult themes, the novel also managed to be easy to read and lighthearted, particularly in the characterisation of Savannah's new college friends. I think the book was probably aimed at someone at a little younger than me but I would definitely recommend this to any young adult. I love any novel about friendship and this book potrays the difficulty of moving through significant life phases, shedding elements of our past selves, and often, shedding relationships and friendships from our lives as we learn and grow.

a beautiful queer coming of age story. i love campus novels so much, and this one really moved me. the found family concept in this book is so strong and lovely. i do wish some characters would have had some more depth though!

Old Enough follows Sav Henry, a college sophomore learning more about herself. She recently came out as bisexual and she's forming friendships with her fellow queer classmates, but she's balancing that with her childhood friend Izzie's engagement. It's not just the engagement, though. Sav and Izzie's friendship fell apart after something happened between Sav and Izzie's brother when the friends were sixteen.

This book covers so much in so few pages: chaotic friendships, trauma, situationships, etc. I loved Sav's college friend group because they felt like real people. It was also interesting to see how Sav changed around her more welcoming friends versus when she was around Izzie and trying to suppress the person she's grown into. That happens so often when we grow up and move on to college, plus there's the added tension from Sav and Izzie's brief fallout in high school. The author handled the complexity of relationships exceptionally well.

Check the trigger warnings for this book before picking it up because it deals with some extraordinarily difficult topics. It took me so long to get through this book because I knew I had to be in the right headspace to finish it, and I'm glad I finally read it.

I liked Sav and her crush on Wes, a nonbinary character who seems so nice.

Some of the flashback chapters were jarring, so I wish they'd flowed better with the rest of the story.

I would 100% pick up a book by Haley Jakobson again. I also loved the college setting. Is New Adult making a comeback? I hope so, as it's such an underrepresented age range in fiction!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Dutton for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! OLD ENOUGH, the debut novel by Haley Jakobson, is a wonderful exploration of queer love, friendship, forgiveness, and being a survivor.

This novel tells the story of Sav, a college sophomore, finding her community while coming to terms with the sexual assault in her past, reckoning with the complexities of her lifelong friendship and the ways she has outgrown her "BFF" Izzie, all while developing feelings for someone new.

Jakobson's writing is lovely - the many characters in OLD ENOUGH are complex, fully formed and believable - and this novel handles really challenging, nuanced topics with grace. I will absolutely recommend this story and will watch out for anything Jakobson writes in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Dutton, Dutton for the ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

It's somewhat hard to get through this one because the trauma that leading lady Sav went through as a teen and is only now dealing with is not an easy topic. Rape when it's someone you know and think you love is hard enough without all that followed, and reading it was not an easy thing.
But there's so much queer joy and community playing a big part in the plot and showing Sav that she has a strong support group of people who love her just the way she is that it's hard not to praise Jakobson's work. You're in Sav's head from teenage-aged to college-aged, and to see the growth and strength she's achieved gives this reader hope.
It might not be for everyone because it touches on some (needlessly) controversial LGBTQ+ elements, but I highly recommend it for those with an open mind looking for a solid story and even for people who could do with some mind-opening reading.

Happy thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for the thought-provoking read!

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the ARC!

This was a good book but not my type of book. First time reading from this author.

4.5 stars

A beautiful story about friendship, queer community, community care, trauma, love, complicated relationships, coming-of-age, coming into your own, and the magic of an all-consuming crush.

This book was messy, sweet, tender, wrenching, enraging, heartbreaking, beautiful, all-consuming, and unputdownable. Haley Jakobson is a writer to watch!

I was enthralled with this book from the beginning and was sad to see it end. This is the kind of book where you want to be friends with the characters, find yourself deeply rooting for their success, and can't help but long for more after you turn the last page. I enjoyed the queer coming-of-age element from a first-hand point of view and appreciated the inclusion and diversity across the characters. Haley has done an incredible job with her debut novel and I'm excited to read her future work.

Oh how I wish I had been able to read this book when I was younger. These are the kinds of books that save people’s lives and help them establish a beautiful sense of self. I’m so thankful that this book exists now and I hope it ends up in the hands of young people who see themselves in the MC’s shoes.

Old Enough was one of my most anticipated novels of 2023, so it is very unfortunate for me to say that it did not meet my expectations. I really loved the plot surrounding sexual assault and the main characters relationship with her high school best friend, but I found the build up of characterization surrounding her college friends to be lackluster and ultimately stain the books beauty. The relationships simply weren't convincing, as the author introduces such a high volume of side characters, leading to more prominent side characters suffering from a lack of depth. I also wasn't a fan of how side characters or background characters were often introduced by the stereotypes they fit into.

An emotional awakening story - touching, raw, and real. A worthwhile read that will have you missing the characters after you finish the story.

What was that meme of the person doing the uppercut of the thing they were preparing for and then getting slugged by the thing that came out of the blue and they weren't expecting?

Because that was this book.

But in a good way?

This took me to some places I was both expecting and not expecting to travel (check out all the trigger warnings), but the core of the book is about finding your people and yourself, and forgiving yourself for being a mess, and learning that trauma never really heals but stays with you and informs everything in some way.

I did find it funny that Sav felt that college was all growed up, because as much as the difference in maturity is from 16 to 18 t0 21, wait until the clarity (and lack thereof) you get at 25, 30, and 36. But then, who doesn't look back at their high school selves from college and go, "wow I was so young and I thought I knew it all, and the world is a lot grayer than it was back then?"

college sophomore sav begins to explore her newly realized queer identity, including a great group of queer friends, while also struggling with past trauma when her high school bff gets engaged. this story blew me away, and i felt myself relating to sav in so many ways to how i was discovering myself in college. i wasn't expecting the darker storyline underneath this book, but it was handled well and added more nuance to sav's growth.

I ended up DNFing this book at about 25%. This was the kind of queer book that felt like it was written for people outside the community instead of people like me. I was looking forward to this because I think the writer's writing on Instagram, but it was a miss for me. The writing felt awkward and clunky to me, but your mileage will likely vary! It was probably more about me than the book!

Thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book!
Overall, I think Old Enough deals with a lot of important topics that a lot of LGTBTQ+ young adults will relate to. Messy relationships, groups of queer friends, dealing with past trauma, and coming of age. I think Jakobsen is a very skilled writer and I'd be interested in checking out her other work!

We love a book about the messiness that is discovering yourself and finding your own path. Really enjoyed this one!