Amelia, If Only

Amelia if Only, ist ein wirklich schöner YA Roman, mit einer starken bi Protagonistin und fast durchweg queeren Nebencharaktern. Es startet ein wenig langsam, aber ab der Hälfte überschlagen sich die Ereignisse und man möchte das Buch nicht mehr aus der Hand legen. Amelia findet auf dem Roadtrip zu einem Meet & Greet ihres Lieblingsyoutubers mehr über sich selbst heraus als erhofft. Eine Story mit tollem Humor, festen Freundschaftsbanden und natürlich der Liebe.

"Amelia If Only" by Becky Albertalli is a tender and emotional coming-of-age story that perfectly combines the complexity of teenage emotions with the warmth of an exciting teenage romance. Amelia has always been obsessed with one specific Youtuber who happens to host a meet and greet not to far away from Amelia's hometown. She uses all her persuasion skills to convince her friend group to take one last roadtrip before everyone goes off the college. During the whole chaos of meeting her favourite YouTuber and her uncertain future Amelia just has to many emotions at once, slowly she realized that she feels butterflies for a certain someone. As always, Albertalli’s writing is filled with wit, charm, and relatable characters, but this book also goes deeper, exploring themes of self-identity, the struggle between who we are and who we want to be, and the tension of living up to other people’s expectations. Becky Albertalli has once again created a relatable, heartwarming tale that blends humor, romance, and real emotional depth. I really enjoyed following Amelia's Journey and spotting some characters from the first book. A huge recommondation for fans of contemporary YA who are looking for a story that feels real and meaningful with a lot of humor.

As usual with Becky Albertalli, I loved the writing style and the characters, as well as the cameos from Imogen-Obviously characters and references to other YA books. Another thing I loved was the discussion on RPF and queerbaiting. It felt like a continuation of the themes in Imogen and as a long-time Dan and Phil girl a lot of it felt embarrassingly, if not painfully, familiar. I think my main problem was my own expectations. I’ve read and loved almost everything Becky Albertalli has put out over the last ten years and Imogen, Obviously is probably my favorite book of hers, so it was hard for a follow-up to hold up to that. However the other thing that bothered me a little was the pacing. I'm not sure how much earlier I would have wanted Amelia to have a certain important revelation, but the ending felt a little rushed to me. In conclusion: This isn’t my favorite Becky Albertalli book, but a great read nonetheless.

Unfortunately, “Amelia, if only” could not convince me as a queer romance book. I see the vision Albertalli was going for, but the execution was kinda mediocre. I kept waiting for the sapphic romance to get more into focus, but it continued to be almost invisible until the very last few chapters. I was hoping for a romantic connection to slowly develop. Instead, it was heavily disguised as jealousy and characters avoiding each other. 90% of this story was just a queer girl crushing on a queer guy she had never met. Apart from the poorly developed plot, the number of stereotypes used in this book had me raging by the end. It seems like the author believes bisexuals use finger guns every 5 minutes and it seriously got tiring to read it over and over again. The only way to make this book actually enjoyable would be if you added a “drink every time the phrase finger guns is used” game.

"Amelia, if only" las sich so weg, war aber nicht mein liebstes Buch von Becky Albertalli. Ich kam weniger an die Figuren ran als bei anderen Geschichten. Hervorheben möchte ich den Einblick ins Thema Fan sein bzw Fan Communities.