Reviews with content warning for Biphobia - I Was Born for This

This book is for the gender neutral girlies who spent their childhoods deeply entrenched in fandom culture on Tumblr (or in my case, Tumblr posts that filtered through into Facebook)--the Larry shippers especially. Reminiscent of the show Swarm and the book Y/N by Esther Yi, this book gets into the nitty gritty sides of fandom culture from two sides: the shippers (a dedicated member of a band's fandom who runs a popular fan Twitter for the band and often reads stories about them on AO3) and the shippee (a member of the band who is often shipped with his bandmate/best friend, which causes him great distress). Oseman dives into the benefits of fandom for queer escapism, pointing out how people in fandoms are often queer girls or gender diverse people looking for community online since they often cannot find it in real life. However, they don't shy away from the negative aspects of fandom, such as extreme/toxic fans who take it too far and make the whole fandom look bad (aka the brick incident), as well as the negative effects that fandom can have on the members of the band in this novel, particularly due to lack of privacy: Jimmy being outed as trans, as well as having frequent panic attacks, depersonalization, and s*icidal thoughts; Rowan's personal life being exploited and exposed to the detriment of his romantic relationship, which becomes very toxic and argumentative; Lister's alcoholism, the biphobia and objectification he experiences, and his experience of being groomed and taken advantage of by an older woman at 16 that he hasn't quite come to terms with. Basically, as Rowan put it, they all need therapy. There are some very heavy topics in this book, particularly mental illness, as is par the course for Oseman's books, but I personally considered it a mostly light read that I devoured in very few sittings; the romantic tension/maybe temporarily one-sided crush also had me giggling and kicking my feet, which is the effect Oseman's romances always have on meee. The characters were so lovable, the relationships felt so real, and I'm excited to pore over Alice's social media for illustrations of these characters, which always feels like a treat after finishing one of their books.

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stormeno's review

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emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Cute and interesting YA story that features a member of a boy band and a mega-fan of said band and the unexpected ways that their lives collide. I thought mental-health and LGBTQIA+ issues were dealt with well in this book. Not my favorite of Oseman’s books, but definitely a good, quick read.

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eugeengel's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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dalek_caan's review against another edition

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lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I found this book to be enjoyable and a pretty quick read. I found Angel to be a really annoying pov character at first but she grew on me as the story went on. I definitely felt like there was a lot of nuance with the characters overall, which I definitely appreciated. It was also kind of interesting to follow two sides to the same story.

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icarusandthesun's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

oh lord oh mighty, i was absolutely not born for this.

i guess i kind of understand why everyone seems to like alice oseman so much. her books have this easy writing style, these pop-culture references and conventionally relatable characters, especially when you're the target audience, which, for this book, means boy band obsessed fangirls (and with fangirls i mean it as a vibe, not necessarily that all of them are girls).
but something about her characters just always strikes me as deeply disconcerting.

wasn't any different with this one - i disliked all of them (except maybe lister).
angel was very self-absorbed in my opinion and just a bad friend to juliet in general. i didn't agree with her most of the time, and her whole talk about how "the fandom is actually such a comforting, supporting, respectful place and most people don't want to be with the band members", i didn't really buy it. also, i just hate her for shipping rowan and jimmy. shipping "real life" people is such a disgusting thing to do, and such a breach of personal privacy.
i didn't like her attitude either; the way she seemed to feel superior to everyone just pissed me off a bit. and the self-pitying phrases like "it's all my fault", "i'm the problem" - peak melodramatic teenage behavior.

juliet was honestly just bland, like her character could've not existed and nothing would've changed. and i don't quite understand what her problem was. she seemed to like mac and just because he "lied" about liking something (something he does like btw, just not as much as they do), she acts like that's the end of the world. that she stopped liking him for being a douchebag, yk that's something i can get behind. but the whole lying thing was written to be so prominent so that it seems like that's what put her over the edge to finally abandon mac. idk, it was weird.

mac was mac. definitely a douchebag, but he wasn't as bad as everyone acted like he was in my opinion. oseman just completely villainized him for no real reason.

now, jimmy. god, how i hated jimmy. he's such a child, literally. his whole crying and running off and not communicating and weird, illogical behavior... i cannot. i don't even want to dwell on him because man, what an absolute fleabag.

rowan was as bland as juliet, and bliss was written to be cool but i just disliked her and her whole personality anyway lol.

and i know most of these characters were written to be flawed so that the inevitable character development hits the reader like a damned truck, but it's not helping when all of the character development happens in the last 50 pages and the remaining 330 pages, the characters are absolute ass and wholly unlikable.

we don't even have to talk about the plot and how unrealistic it was. like all of it. and it made me not enjoy the book at all, because everything was so convenient and highly unlikely and frustrating.

and can we please, please talk about the god-motive in this book? because it seems like no one talks about it. the amount of religion and religious messages and stuff were so out of place.
it's cool that these characters believe in some sort of religion, i really don't care. but the joan of arc quotes about death and sin felt so out of place, because it's a fanfic-y young adult book!!!
and the woman in the tube suddenly preaching about god and god's plan...
that sort of felt a little bit like propaganda, ngl.

i also didn't buy the whole mental illness spiel that some of these characters've got going on. whenever something inconvenient happens, they all go "i hate my life", "i don't want to live", "i'm worthless". which i get because that's what teenagers do, being stupid and irrational about their own emotions. but still, it was annoying. like mental illnesses are a joke, can be dismissed as soon as someone is doing fine again.

idk. it's safe to say that the book wasn't for me. i'm starting to think it's just an author-reader mismatch and that's completely fine. i think alice oseman is a good person, and i'm glad there are people who enjoy her books.
just ... not me.

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lizziaha's review against another edition

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Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

As someone who has participated in multiple different fandom spaces, some of the things in this book immediately put me on the defensive. But I think it was good for me to flex those muscles and really examine how I and other people were interacting within fandoms. I also think that these main characters did a lot of things that I might not do or want them to do, but I think that made me engage with the text more as well. Definitely an interesting read!

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glorytowers05's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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