Love, Simon might be Becky Albertalli’s most popular book, but in my opinion, Imogen, Obviously is her best so far. And now, I got to read Amelia, If Only. From the moment I started reading, my hands were shaking a bit, and my heart thudded in my throat. Would this one even be better than Imogen?
 
Amelia, If Only is by far Becky’s loudest novel. Amelia is just more than a little crazy (not meant negatively). Her mind! Amelia herself calls it the Amelia brain ecosystem. It just keeps going and going and going, and sometimes, I found it hard to follow her leaps of thought. But she’s also so hilarious. I laughed out loud about all these nicknames, and Markillean Freddie Markury was the funniest (even though my autocorrect disagrees since it tried to correct the name at least five times).
 
Have you ever been a fan of someone? And wanted to know everything about them? Even to the point where you count that artist, or influencer, or athlete, or whoever it may be among your personal friends while you've never met that someone in person? Or even secretly dreamt about a romantic relationship with that person? Yep. That’s what this story is about, and Becky did a fantastic job portraying what it means to be a fan or a stan of someone and how it influences lives. In between Amelia’s story, the reader gets an insight into an insane fandom through YouTube transcriptions, Twitter-, Reddit-, and Instagram threads. And I loved reading those snippets. It was so real! Just like Amelia, I wanted to meet Walter so badly. And I have to admit, it was a slow, slow, slow burn until that first meeting. All those transcripts and threads hyped me up so much and kept me flying through the pages. 

And did you know that Imogen and Tessa appear in this story? Oh, and there's an Adib Khoram reference! I smiled so hard when I read those passages! 
 
So, is this story even better than Imogen, Obviously? Well, I loved the friend group, laughed out loud about Amelia’s unhinged thoughts, and couldn’t tear my eyes from all those transcriptions and threads. I loved, loved the overall story, and yeah, even though, I thought it wouldn’t be possible, I think I liked this story even more than Imogen’s.

Oh, and Becky? Please let those two cinnamon buns be the couple in your next story!

This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

3.25 ⭐️
I found the first half of this book extremely slow and very hard to get into. A lot of time was spent on the content of Walter and Hayden, and it seemed like barely anything happened in the story. Luckily, this really picks up once you hit the 50-60% mark, and is reminiscent of a typical Becky Albertalli book in terms of being entertaining, having good character moments and introspection. Also typical of her books, this one contains a really believable and interesting group of friends. I do wish the romance felt a little less rushed, as it mostly just occurred at the very end of the book.

So cute and funny! I loved how quippy the main character was and how real the friendship group dynamics were. This book captured the essence of how a crush on a celebrity (or some other unknowable/unattainable person) is so different from a crush on someone you actually might date. I found myself holding my breath waiting to see with Amelia was going to do. And loved following along her crush journey on this YA roadtrip romp! Thanks to Netgalley for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

Idk, this book is a fast read and focusing the story on parasocial relationships was interesting, I do think that "that person you follow online doesn't actually know who you are even though it feels like you have a connection," is an important thing teens and older do often have to come to terms with, but the internet culture this book describes to me felt weirdly off? All the references to VidCon and the kind of vlogger Walter is felt like a product of the youtuber creator culture from 15 years ago, but a lot of the slang/sources of tension in the plot were extremely of the moment. I was also hoping this book would actually dive into the borsht belt setting and history, but it was very surface level and didn't really add anything, there was barely a paragraph total about it. The Jewish rep was the reason I picked this up, but I was left feeling underwhelmed.

I like that this YA book has a theme of a parasocial relationship, as this is becoming a big thing for teenagers and it's not mentioned in many YA books yet. The seconds between chapters showing the way people talked about him online vs how he was in real life was done very well. The romance between Amelia and Natalie took me a bit off guard. Besides a few times where Natalie seemed upset by her interest in Walter, I didn't feel the romance between them. It was sweet at the end though. Also very much connected with being Jewish and having ties to Westchester.