Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

This is such a delightful and entertaining YA rom com, with amazing representation and authentic characters! Highly recommended for anyone looking for a light-hearted read that at the same time discusses important themes and deals with many of the issues queer teenagers struggles with in a real way.

The story follows sixteen-year-old Darcy Phillips who gives anonymous relationship advice to her high school peers via ‘Locker 89’. Darcy is openly bisexual and has a wonderful supportive group of friends and family, especially her sister (my absolute favorite person in this story!). But she could nevertheless really need some of her own relationship advice about how to tell her best friend, Brooke, that she’s been secretly in love with her for forever. Especially when she can’t help herself from meddling in Brooke’s dating life out of jealousy. Or when things take a turn for the worse when the school hottie and swim star Alexander Brougham sees her opening locker 89 and blackmails her into being her own private relationship coach in the strive to win his ex-girlfriend back.

There were so many things I loved about this book, like the wonderful relationship between Darcy and her older transgender sister Ainsley (and the fact in itself that Ainsley was transgender but it wasn’t made into a big deal), the insightful discussions about internal biphobia and how bisexual people aren’t ‘queer enough’ if they’re in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender, all the representation including gay, lesbian, pansexual, ace and non-binary characters (to name a few), and the great dialogues. I loved the funny bantering and authentic dialogues, and how the teenage friendships were described. It was all so well done in the way issues such as crushes, jealousy, insecurity, finding your true self and where you belong, were addressed.

I must admit though that it took me a long time to root for Darcy. Normally I love flawed characters, but here I had problems connecting with her because she didn’t feel fleshed out enough for me to accept some of the double standards she had and because I just couldn’t understand her motivations at times. And the relationship with, and Darcy’s secret crush on, her best friend Brooke never felt completely believable, there was something off with the dynamics there for me. But kudos to Sophie Gonzales for not being afraid of showing Darcy’s lesser likable sides, like her selfishness, jealousy and pettiness, and for the amazing character development she let her (and some of the other characters, especially Brougham) undergo. No matter how cliché it might be, I do have a soft spot for missunderstood bad boys with hidden good hearts, so after a rough start Brougham really won me over...

All in all, this was such a delightful, sweet, adorkable and wonderful YA story that embraced and showed an amazing array of queer characters who all felt authentic and real, and opened up for important discussions about biphobia at the same time as it was a fast-paced, light-hearted and addictive read. Highly recommended!

Rating:
4 stars

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​Author info:
Sophie Gonzales