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A review by ihateprozac
Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough
4.0
Amelia Westlake is a positively delightful tale of queer girls inventing a hoax character to expose the injustices in their stuffy private school. Set against this are themes of finding love, navigating friendships, and standing up for what you believe in. And best of all, it’s queer as hell!
It’s full of so many things I love:
- Female/female romance
- Multiple queer female characters including QPOC
- Enemies-to-lovers trope
- Princess-and-the-Pauper/Girl-from-the-Wrong-Side-of-the-Tracks trope
Admittedly I don’t read a lot of OzYA that’s actually set in Australia (most of it tends to be speculative fiction). I had some concerns that this would be Sydney-centric or full of Aussie colloquialisms, but it’s surprisingly accessible for an international audience! You could honestly cut and paste this story to any major city and it would be easily understood.
I was sooooo here for the amount of queer girls in this story. One of the protagonists, Harriet, likes girls. Her classmate and friend-with-benefits is a bisexual Vietnamese-Australian girl. The other protagonist is an openly out lesbian who’s dating another openly queer girl from another school. Their relationships all get a bit tangled, but it’s never quite a love triangle nor does it ever quite suffer from the “There are queer girls? They’re cheating on each other!” device.
The thing that holds this back from being a full 5 star contemporary for me (and I’m getting spoilery here) is I liked that Erin Gough depicted a friendship where both parties fucked up, and which wasn’t easily resolved by the end of the book, but I don’t think I’m still mad about it and the more I think about it, the angrier I get!!!
GAH.
Overall it was a really enjoyable read and full of fluffy queer gal hijinks, but can honestly get in the fucking bin.
Representation: multiple F/F romances, bisexual and lesbian female characters, Vietnamese-Australian QWOC minor character
It’s full of so many things I love:
- Female/female romance
- Multiple queer female characters including QPOC
- Enemies-to-lovers trope
- Princess-and-the-Pauper/Girl-from-the-Wrong-Side-of-the-Tracks trope
Admittedly I don’t read a lot of OzYA that’s actually set in Australia (most of it tends to be speculative fiction). I had some concerns that this would be Sydney-centric or full of Aussie colloquialisms, but it’s surprisingly accessible for an international audience! You could honestly cut and paste this story to any major city and it would be easily understood.
I was sooooo here for the amount of queer girls in this story. One of the protagonists, Harriet, likes girls. Her classmate and friend-with-benefits is a bisexual Vietnamese-Australian girl. The other protagonist is an openly out lesbian who’s dating another openly queer girl from another school. Their relationships all get a bit tangled, but it’s never quite a love triangle nor does it ever quite suffer from the “There are queer girls? They’re cheating on each other!” device.
The thing that holds this back from being a full 5 star contemporary for me (and I’m getting spoilery here) is
Spoiler
the friendship with Natasha.Spoiler
Natasha gets to demonise Harriet, when Natasha fucking OUTED her in the school newspaper! I’m mad as hell that a queer girl outed other queer girls in a school publication, then had the audacity to use the defense “well you were a bad friend and you put my job in jeopardy and I’m a journalist so I have a right to the story”.GAH.
Overall it was a really enjoyable read and full of fluffy queer gal hijinks, but
Spoiler
NatashaRepresentation: multiple F/F romances, bisexual and lesbian female characters, Vietnamese-Australian QWOC minor character