Perfect on Paper

As her high school’s go-to relationship guru, Darcy Phillips is great at giving anonymous advice to other students. She knows how to get your oblivious lab partner to notice you, or your boyfriend to be more emotionally present. Until fellow classmate, Alexander Brougham, finds out who’s actually running this (previously) covert operation and recruits Darcy as his personal dating coach. In exchange for helping Brougham win back his ex-girlfriend, he promises to keep Darcy’s secret identity under-wraps—which she desperately wants, because if her best friend (and long-time crush) Brooke found out who was behind locker eighty-nine, she’d also uncover some unsavory secrets Darcy’s been keeping. 

For fans of Netflix’s Sex Education or anyone who loved Sophie Gonzales’ previous YA rom-com, Only Mostly Devastated, prepare to be dazzled yet again. Perfect on Paper is a hilarious, heartfelt story full of great relationship advice, trips to Disneyland, and a damn-good romance. The novel is also an unabashed rejection of queerphobia (biphobia specifically), showcasing widespread normalized queer representation and an openly bisexual heroine whose interest in a boy in no way “erases” her queerness. 

Gonzales is a talented storyteller who brings new life to young adult romance through her unique concepts, dynamic queer characters, and spot-on dialogue. In Perfect on Paper, she both engages with and subverts classic tropes of the genre with wit and skill. I mean, and I know I’m not the first to say this, but there’s just something about the timeless “two characters who only refer to each other by their last names suddenly switching to a first-name basis to show the growing intimacy between them” that really hits me hard in the ole heart.

So let me channel my inner Darcy Phillips for a moment and offer you some advice: don’t miss this book! 

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing us with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

I had high expectations for this novel—and Sophie Gonzales exceeded all of them. Perfect on Paper is a funny & sweet, and also deeply important read. The characters are three-dimensional, messy, and real. I laughed, I smiled, I cried, and I had a genuinely excellent time reading this story. 

I really appreciated seeing a diverse cast of queer characters; this story showcased a spectrum of sexualities and gender identities in a really positive way. The main character, Darcy, is a bisexual girl who is dealing with internalized biphobia and her place in the queer community when she starts getting feels for a straight man, and it’s handled in a really beautiful and inspiring way.

All in all, this is an excellent novel & highly recommend it!

This book is everything I wanted. I just finished and honestly can’t stop smiling. It’s genuine good-hearted romance with tons of representation and all of the classic high school hijinks to boot.

I've been wanting to read Perfect on Paper ever since I read a comment Sophie Gonzales wrote about it on Goodreads, about how writing it was partially pushback against the criticism she'd received over having a bisexual character end up with a person of the opposite sex. As a bisexual teen, I've often been made to feel by people both inside and out of the LGBT+ community that I'm "not queer enough" whenever I express attraction to masculine-presenting human beings. I've even felt pressured, on multiple occasions, to speak negatively about my attraction towards men, as if it is some burden I would rather not carry, in order to feel accepted in queer spaces. I really wish I'd had a character like Darcy to hold on to when I was first struggling with these issues post-coming out. That was one of my favorite things about this book: it isn't a coming out story. Darcy is out and proud and openly discusses her bisexuality with her love interest, but still has niggling doubts about being viewed as not queer enough if she's in a "straight passing" relationship. Reading about Darcy's struggle with this internalized biphobia, and her friends' reassurance that she is queer, was exactly the sort of catharsis I was hoping to get from this story. And that was just one of the many many things I loved about the book! 
Other things to love about this book: Awesome relationship advice that acknowledges that romance can be tricky and there's no one right way to approach a conflict. A variety of beautifully queer characters, including Darcy's sister who is a really badass trans YouTuber, High school musical discourse. And flirting at Disneyland! (Seriously this book might as well have been handcrafted for me because it gave me so many things I never even knew I needed from a contemporary. I finished it in a single evening because it made me so freaking happy I just couldn't put it down.

This was the perfect read for #BiVisibilityDay this year! I loved Perfect on Paper and hope we keep seeing many more fun romcoms with great representation like this (which I wish I'd had when I was in high school, but better late than never).

WOW! Sophie Gonzales has truly done it again. I did not think there was any way for her to beat out my love of Only Mostly Devastated but BOOM - She did it. I am beyond shook after having read this book. 

One thing I loved so dearly about OMD is that we saw a bi character in a m/f relationship and I don’t think we see enough of that. Bi people are still bi no matter who they are dating. In OMD that was very much a side plot but here that is the front and center narrative. Darcy is so beautifully and unabashedly queer, even when she starts to have feelings for Alexander.  Her queerness is such an integral part of her identity and it was fantastic to see how Darcy navigated that while within a m/relationship. 

Without giving anything away there is a scene at the end of this book in a meeting of the Queer and Questioning club that is so earth shatteringly important. You will know exactly what scene I am talking about when you get to it. I promise. I was a WRECK of emotions. 

Everyone needs to read this book. It is so clear the care and love Sophie put into each and every page. Darcy is smart, funny, and such a fantastic mess. Sophie has a way of writing that keeps you engaged every step of the way. There was not a moment of this story that felt slow or rushed. It moved at the exact right pace it needed to move. 

Sophie is also so great about building an entire world within her books. We not only have fantastic and multifaceted main characters but the entire world of Perfect on Paper is made up of a whole incredibly diverse ensemble of side characters. There is literally room for everyone to feel represented in this book. This type of book is SO NEEDED in the YA space right now. Sophie Gonzales is a master of the page and I cannot see what she gives us next!!

Also shout out for the first time I have ever seen an author pull out the word Schadenfreude! That is one of my favorite words of all time.