Only Mostly Devastated

You know those feel good movies that are short and sweet and fun while you’re watching it, but mostly forgettable? You all know what I’m talking about. It’s the experience of something that is fine, enjoyable even, but largely unnoticed on the grand scheme of things?

Only Mostly Devastated is like that. 

Now, before the fangirls attack, let me just say that what I commented above is not an inherent criticism. Not every novel that I read, or people want to read, has to be a masterful prose full of epistemological queries and agonizing philosophies on life.

Sometimes you want something sweet and fluffy, like cotton candy, to fill in the times when your brain needs a break. A good book does not necessarily equate to a challenging book, although English teachers in school will have you believe otherwise. 

Sometimes books can just be fun. 

Only Mostly Devastated tells the queer book version of Grease, down to allusions making its way even on the front cover. The plot is basic in its storytelling.

The main character, Oliver, is staying in North Carolina for the summer with his parents as they help out his aunt while she receives treatment for cancer. During the summer, Oliver has a not-so-summer-fling with a boy named Will that both think will end when Oliver moves back to California at the end of the season. 

But lo and behold! Oliver’s parents decide to stay in North Carolina for a year to help out, forcing Oliver to spend his last year of high school far away from home and unbeknownst to him, attend the same high school as his beloved Will from the summer. 

However, predictably, Will from summer and Will the basketball player that Oliver meets in high school, seem to be two different people, with Oliver trying to reconcile why the boy he loves is pretending like he doesn’t exist. 

This book...isn’t original. In any way, shape, or form. From the plot, the characters, the dialogue, and even the writing, nothing about this stands out too much to me. Again, this does not make it a bad read, sometimes you want light and easy and predictable, but it does make it a forgettable one. 

The plot is fine. It’s sturdy, it works for what Gonzales is trying to achieve, which is mainly the love story between Will and Oliver. She does try to throw some other things in there, like putting a side character who is struggling with being bisexual, another side character with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), some light stuff on body image, other airy commentary on fetishizing people’s sexualization, and of course, the death and loss of a loved one and the grieving process that goes with it. 

Now, you might be saying, wow, thetypedwriter, what are you thinking? That is so much stuff that she put into her book! Incredible! How can you call it shallow and predictable?

Well, for one, the book is short. While again, nice for those readers who want something light to carry on their way to tan by the pool, this is great, but for those readers who want something more, this can be frustrating. 

For an in-depth reading experience for any of those themes above, the tip of the iceberg would be putting it lightly. The book skims the surface of those topics, but they aren’t delved into in any semblance of sophistication or depth that would actually make this a more memorable read. 

Reason two, Sophie Gonzales does come across quite preachy sometimes. Now, this can be tricky so let me explain. Putting forth your agenda or your beliefs and values in a book is not an erroneous thing to do.

Actually, it’s an amazing thing to do and people have been using books as a form of expression for these types of things for centuries. Some may argue that the intrinsic value of a book is to express such opinions. 

However, this is not Sophie Gonzales’ biography, nor is it an opinion article about how she feels about the fetishization of girls kissing girls for male entertainment. When you are going to put your opinions and beliefs into your book, it needs to make sense in the scheme of the characters. 

For example, if J.K. Rowling randomly had Ron go on a speech about women’s rights and toxic masculinity, it would be out-of-character and baffling since Ron would not be the character to say such a thing.

However, if Hermione were to give such a speech, the ideas and beliefs would be passed along, message received, but without breaking character or pulling me out of the universe to think what the hell because a sermon came out of left field that held no continuity in the scheme of the novel as a whole. 

This happened to me quite a lot in Only Mostly Devastated. It was like Sophie Gonzales got to a certain point, told her characters to step aside, and then got on her soapbox to preach about love and acceptance. Once again, I’m not against any of the messages she’s portraying at all. 

What I think lacked finesse, however, was the way in which she got those messages across, which was often out-of-character and forced the plot to go certain places just so she could get the chance to talk about those issues. 

With that out of the way, other slight criticisms I have mainly are to be found with the characters and the writing itself. 

The characters were all likable enough. I’m not about to go write fanfiction about any of them though. They were largely generic, although entertaining enough for what this book is offering. They were also all pretty forgettable and formed pretty forgettable relationships as well. Do I really remember any of Will’s friends? Nope. What about Oliver’s girl squad? Kind of? I did appreciate the attempt at including more characters of color, including Will.

I do think that Lara was the most interesting character. I honestly would have preferred to have had a whole novel about her rather than told from Oliver’s point-of-view, simply as Oliver is basic as all hell (white boy that plays guitar and is slightly awkward. I’ve only seen this character about 10 million thousand times before).

 And if Gonzales had written this novel about Lara instead, all of her themes would have worked infinitely better. You still get the struggle with sexuality, you still get the side POC characters with PCOS and body image issues, and you could still have the plot of loss and death if you wanted to.

The friendship with the girls would make so much more sense, the fetishization topic could have been delved into way more thoroughly, and Lara was kind of a bitch, and I appreciated that about her. You would even still get a musical person in the form of Juliette even without Oliver on the scene. 

But, nope. We get Oliver. Which is...fine. Mediocre, but fine, I guess. 

Lastly, Gonzales is a perfectly average writer. The story flowed, it was funny, it had its moments of nuance and sarcasm, but there were moments where she would make comparisons, always with similes or metaphors, that left me literally confounded because of how bizarre and out-of-place I found them. 

Some examples:

1. “Up close, she smelled like sugary flowers.” 

-I’m sorry, but what do sugary flowers smell like? Why are the flowers sugary? Who would even sugar their flowers in the first place?

2. “Deep inside my chest, my heart was beating as though it was trying to tear free from bondage.”

-Just...an extremely odd choice of words. Why bondage, Sophie Gonzales, why?

3. “I’d rather floss with barbed wire, than watch a live sports match…”

-Ummm eww and scary?

I could go on and on with the frankly awful choices for comparison that are made in this book with incessant use, but I think you get the point. The smilies and metaphors were downright baffling. Not really sure what Gonzales was going for with them, but...no. Just no. 

Lastly, Oliver’s nickname Ollie-oop made me want to curl up and die. It didn’t make them seem like better friends. In fact the whole rose gold-girl-group and Oliver was such a dumpster fire of a friendship that lacked any and all actual solid foundations for a relationship that it annoyed me, especially in the end when Oliver decides to stay in North Carolina to be with people he’s not even close to. 

Additionally, the inclusion of Oliver’s two friends from back home was just...pointless, utterly pointless. I don’t even know why she bothered to write them into the story honestly. They added nothing.

Again, her themes are good in nature and provocative in theory, but the book was just too short and shallow to justify writing in any of it when really all she cared about was Will and Oliver sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. It was almost like fanfiction, but published. Actually, nope, I think fanfiction is better. 

Wow, I guess I had more feelings about this book than I thought, mostly negative too. Once again, I want to heavily emphasize that I DIDN’T HATE IT. It was a super, light, super cute, very simple book that I’m sure a ton of people will appreciate right now with everything heavy going on in the world.

If you need a book in cloud-form, this is your novel. But....if you wanted something more like me, if you found it just a little too simplistic in nature, just a little too forgettable, then that’s okay too. 

Recommendation: If you’re too burdened down by carrying your sunscreen and your cooler out to the pool, this is the perfect light summer reading to tuck under one arm and melt your worries away for a little while. If you want an actually good, actually complex and refined LGBTQ+ coming of age novel then I’d definitely go for the likes of Red, White, and Royal Blue or Autoboyagraphy instead. 

Score: 5/10