I wanna start this off by saying this books predecessor is probably one of my favorite written works, ever. As a LGBT mexican i really don’t see myself represented in media often, and so having a book— having characters like ari and dante in my life got me through some really rough points. my copy of the book is thoroughly annotated with
sticky notes and all, and the cover is being held together with binder clips. (i bought my copy in 2015.)

I preordered the sequel as soon as amazon let me and I received it on release day (oct 12), and read through it in a day. I’d missed these two SO much, and my expectations were high as I’m a huge fan of Sáenz’s other works.

But this one didn’t quite meet my expectations.
Although the book wasn’t rushed in any capacity- the pacing worked really well, I really felt like there wasn’t much of a story after school started for both boys.
there were also a ton of new characters introduced and i often found it really hard to keep track of who was who (note: i am autistic, and this is hard for me in most books, but i was having more difficulty than usual.)
I also feel like we didn’t really see a whole lot of Dante. But, seeing as the books are told from Ari’s perspective, I guess I can’t complain?
Overall the book was Good. All of this author’s work is gorgeous, i just felt like there was unreached potential for both characters here.

However, this author used to (i think he still does) tweet about dante and ari pretty frequently (sometimes about what they’re up to.) , and that satisfies my need for content, for now.

I’ve also seen photos of the casting for the movie, and I am beyond excited.