Rating: ★★★★
Blurb: Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself. Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought. Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favorite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe. Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, is an empowering novel for anyone who has ever felt that fandom is family. Goodreads At one of my first times in a library earlier this year, I had checked my Goodreads to try and find more books like Ship It and books within that ‘fandom’ realm. While it was fairly hard to find something that was more fan-ish than romantic, I discovered the intoxicatingly pink cover of Queen of Geeks and after reading the summary, instantly got good vibes. (And you’re probably like, but Cole, it ‘two love stories’ right on the cover!!! But listen, there definitely are two romances going on, but that’s not the only plots going on, there’s absolutely a lot of man vs. self and man vs. society that goes on.) The only main thing that might irk people is that some of the dialogue was pretty cheesy or stiff at times, but it still maintained to be fluffy and cute. In the same vein, some sections of the writing felt simple or choppy, but quite honestly I got so lost in the story that it didn’t end of mattering all that much later on. There was, however, just so much that this book got utterly right. Firstly, the lead character. Yes. Charlie was hands down more than I could ask for. From being so casual about her sexuality to speaking up against the double standards she faces as a female actress, it was unlike something I’d seen in similar books where usually a character’s sexuality that dithers from straight always has to be a big deal or how little I see of sexism discussed in scenarios outside the character’s school. Charlie is both the celebrity and the fan, leaving readers more readily able to relate to her as a teenager than if she were just some thirty-something celebrity (as was the case in Ship It.) Charlie being a Bi POC and the lead definitely also added something to be desired when reading. Alongside her diversity, Taylor, her best friend, is autistic and has anxiety. While she was a mix between a side and a lead character, having this realistic mix of diversity in a book makes it more appealing to people that are sick of the binary. Taylor and Jaime are written very much like two characters that are inherently a dynamic duo, they get perfectly in and out of sync with one another that their scenes are noticeably more tied together than Charlie’s POV. One little thing I really loved was that since a majority of the fandoms within the book were fake or were classic references, the book never really seemed aged to a 2019 reader like myself, unlike What If It’s Us where the Hamilton references really make it less ‘relatable’ or ‘in’ since the references date the longer the book’s out. The diversity alone should be a draw for readers and since a majority of us our fans, the book only fuels the fire internally the entire time the gang goes to their first convention and geeks out. To sum it up, I finished this book in just a little over one sitting. It was quick, fun, and about the perfect pallet cleanser, I’d recommend to anyone looking for something to read between heavy, physically or emotional, books.
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