Review for "Leah On The Offbeat" by Becky Albertalli

Rating: ★★★☆☆

So, what I’ve noticed about Becky Albertalli’s writing: she is great at writing from the perspective of cute, nerdy, adorable gay boys (Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda and What If It’s Us). BUT not great at writing from the teenage female perspective. They are just so bitchy (this book and The Upside of Unrequited). This book is 3 stars for me; I enjoyed it and I liked almost all of the characters except Leah herself. I got this same vibe from her while reading Simon and honestly I wish the spin-off would’ve been about someone else. Also, a lot of the problems I had with Leah i also found to be problematic in Molly and Cassie from The Upside Of Unrequited, hence my theory on the author’s strengths and weaknesses. So what was so wrong with Leah? 3 main things:

1. She’s just mean. Like all the horrible things she thinks about Wells - in her internal monologue, to her mother’s face, to Wells’s face. It was so horrible reading some of the things she said to her own mother. And for what? Because she didn’t like the fact her mom was dating someone? She was single for 7 years and had to raise you, Leah, she deserves happiness finally!!
2. She complains about everyone and their petty problems while she is completely absorbed in her own petty problems. Simon comes to her with a real concern about moving away from his boyfriend and wants real advice, and she’s just kinda like bro it isn’t a big deal chill out. But then her own problems, aka having a crush on someone, are like the end of the world.
3. She is terrible at being inclusive. She totally turns on her friend for saying something racist, and won’t back down even when the person it was said against forgives her. But THEN when that same victim comes out as LGBT she’s like “what? That sexuality doesn’t exist you’re WRONG” and the other person is just like but this is how I feel and leahs like NO and so the other person is like okay and runs off crying and then just turns around and forgives her like the next day. I just, I can’t even.

So this book was not horrible, honestly it gets 3 stars instead of 2 because I like the side stories from the other characters so much - mainly Simon and Nora (I wish we got more of Nora - honestly I kind of shipped her with Leah but RIP ship). Definitely not as good as Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda but definitely better than The Upside Of Unrequited.