A review by girlreading
Odd One Out by Nic Stone
4.0
A wonderfully, infuriating and messy story.
I don’t know how else to describe this other than messy but in the best way. It portrayed the painfully messy inner workings of being a teen, the messy journey of discovering yourself and the mess that is society and the messages that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t quite escape.
So yeah, it was a mess but a brilliantly written one. It was funny, stressful, lighthearted, heavy and authentic. The characters were equally funny, witty, strong, loveable, messy and freaking infuriating. I kinda wanted to throw this book across the room at a few of their decisions but I’m pretty sure I’ve felt this way at some point or another about every teenager I’ve ever met (and I have no doubt many felt this on multiple occasions towards my teen-self. *I* feel this about my teen-self) but I also wanted to wrap them in bubblewrap and make everything okay.
I adored the way the three POV’s were structured. I don’t think I’ve ever read a multiple POV book where it dedicated portions of the book to each character, rather than alternating chapters etc. but I loved it.
All in all, this book sent me on a rollercoaster of loving it, hating it, having no clue what I felt about it, to finally settling on (I think) that kind of being the point, maybe? Life is a total mess, bad decisions are made and nobody’s perfect and people (teens especially) should be allowed to be messy in regards to figuring out who they are and where they fit in the world. So despite not agreeing with pretty much any of the decisions these characters made, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and feel like it will be an incredibly important one for many readers.
TW: homophobic slur, biphobia, deadnaming
I don’t know how else to describe this other than messy but in the best way. It portrayed the painfully messy inner workings of being a teen, the messy journey of discovering yourself and the mess that is society and the messages that, no matter how hard you try, you can’t quite escape.
So yeah, it was a mess but a brilliantly written one. It was funny, stressful, lighthearted, heavy and authentic. The characters were equally funny, witty, strong, loveable, messy and freaking infuriating. I kinda wanted to throw this book across the room at a few of their decisions but I’m pretty sure I’ve felt this way at some point or another about every teenager I’ve ever met (and I have no doubt many felt this on multiple occasions towards my teen-self. *I* feel this about my teen-self) but I also wanted to wrap them in bubblewrap and make everything okay.
I adored the way the three POV’s were structured. I don’t think I’ve ever read a multiple POV book where it dedicated portions of the book to each character, rather than alternating chapters etc. but I loved it.
All in all, this book sent me on a rollercoaster of loving it, hating it, having no clue what I felt about it, to finally settling on (I think) that kind of being the point, maybe? Life is a total mess, bad decisions are made and nobody’s perfect and people (teens especially) should be allowed to be messy in regards to figuring out who they are and where they fit in the world. So despite not agreeing with pretty much any of the decisions these characters made, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and feel like it will be an incredibly important one for many readers.
TW: homophobic slur, biphobia, deadnaming