If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction
Blurb (on back of book):
Eighteen-year-olds Ruben Montez and Zach Knight are two members of the boy-band Saturday, one of the biggest acts in America.
Along with their bandmates, Angel Phan and Jon Braxton, the four are teen heartbreakers in front of the cameras and best friends backstage. But privately, cracks are starting to form: their once-easy rapport is straining under the pressures of fame, and Ruben confides in Zach that he’s feeling smothered by management’s pressure to stay in the closet. On a whirlwind tour through Europe, with both an unrelenting schedule and minimal supervision, Ruben and Zach come to rely on each other more and more, and their already close friendship evolves into a romance. But when they decide they’re ready to tell their fans and live freely, Zach and Ruben start to truly realize that they will never have the support of their management. How can they hold tight to each other when the whole world seems to want to come between them?
MY OPINION: ****
It's been a while since I've read a Young Adult novel, mainly because I've been veering more towards the new adult/adult fiction more recently. I used to love exclusively YA and never read anything else but now that I've taken such an extended break from it, it's been interesting to see how my reading tastes have both changed and stayed the same since then.
I absolutely loved the premise of this book and while there were things I wasn't too overjoyed about, I ended up really liking it. The book follows an extremely popular boy band and the secret romance between of its members, Ruben and Zach. It covers a myriad of important and relevant topics to today's society, especially in terms of pop culture and media mismanagement and the trials of living in the public eye. I really liked this angle because I hadn't really read about it before from the perspective of someone trying to hide an integral part of themselves because they are told to. I have obviously read the pop-star trope before, but never from this perspective, which I really liked.
This book was very reminiscent of 2014 Larry Stylinson fanfiction. Now, I would like to preface this by saying that I never actually read Larry fanfics (or any One Direction fanfics) but it's become sort of infamous by this point and everyone, at least in my generation, knows what I am referring to. Now, as this is all mere speculation and is very unconfirmed, I do think that Larry stans have a little bit of toxicity when it comes to shipping of two supposedly heterosexual (or at least men who do not like each other) people. However, I'm not going to go too far into that because it isn't overly relevant to this review. I just thought I'd mention it because I'm fairly sure 80% of the readers of this book was thinking about it too, though I could be wrong.
I loved Ruben's and Zach's characters. This book was written by two authors, both of whom I believe wrote one character each, which I think gave them each distinctive voices that I could easily compare and contrast. I didn't feel as if they were from the same mold or had the same traits and instead I really saw the differences in the two and how they built on each other from those differences.
Ruben has been out to his close family and friends for a while but due to the horrible management company of the boy band has been forced to stay closeted to the public. I think this was an important issue that this book really covered. LGBTQ+ representation in the media has become more normalized in recent years but it still carries with it a sort of stigma that is completely unfair and horrible. Celebrities are often more open about their sexuality but oftentimes, how the public treats them leads to more homophobia and discrimination towards people. It's a painful process and I liked how this book really covered all sides of that horrible reality, both before and after coming out to the public as an "influencer" or important figure.
Zach is a people-pleaser, desperate to do anything to make the people around him happy before himself. While this is obviously a character weakness, I liked how this was written in because it gave him a chance to grow and gave us readers the opportunity to really see his development both through himself and with the help of Ruben. Zach spends a lot of the first part of this book very confused about his sexuality and the feelings he is suddenly having towards Ruben, another important topic this book touched upon. Coming out and labelling carries with it a stigma that I think is unfairly confusing and oftentimes too complex for young people to really understand and declare about themselves. It's unfair that people should have to label themselves as one thing or another and then be forced to declare it to the world (or at least those around you) rather than having it being treated as just another part of who you are, like the color of your hair or your height.
As an avid concert-lover, I absolutely loved the whole boy-band, world-tour, venue-hopping aspect of this book. I especially loved getting to see that entire phenomenon from the perspective of four boys who are just that: teenage boys who never dreamed they would get so popular. This is true of many boy bands and regular music/entertainment stars, I feel like, in that it can get very overwhelming to have every move dictated for you and every action documented by loving but obsessive fans (I myself am one of those for several bands/singers, and this book made me really reflect on my actions just in case I was causing that kind of stress on the celebrities I love). I liked getting to see this side of things because while I'd obviously thought about it before, I'd never truly understood what it must be like (yes, this is a fictional account but the authors did a great job of making it seem real).
My only critique with this book was the pacing. In the beginning, I was obsessed. We see two boys with some sort of feelings for each other but both confused with how to navigate it. I was down for that. I was hoping for a slow burn or at least a buildup to a relationship. However (MINOR SPOILERS), we really just see a fight, a cold shoulder, and then a makeup and suddenly the two are a couple. I wasn't a fan of that pacing.
I also didn't like how the second half of the book seemed sort of disjointed. We start to see more about the lives of the other two boys in the band, Angel and Jon, but it felt rather supplemental to the real core of the story rather than being smoothly integrated with the text. I personally would have liked to have seen more of the Angel drama throughout the entire book, rather than shoved on us more towards the middle/climax/end areas.
I would like to say that the Angel episodes were very integral to the book and I really loved how the author used this opportunity to cover more important issues that often come with being famous (drug abuse, pressure, depression, mental health decline). I do think the authors could have done a lot more with that entire storyline, such as making it more prominent towards the beginning, as I stated, and sort of building up the friendships between the boys more. We are led to believe they are all close friends but I didn't really see evidence of that besides between Ruben and Zach.
Ruben's mother was a horrible person and I hated her with all my heart. She gaslighted her own son to the point where he didn't even know if she was a good or bad person and my heart felt for Ruben the entire time she was on the screen (or page). I wish we had gotten more of a conclusion there as it would have been interesting to see Ruben truly move on from that stage of his life. I'm not here for a redemption arc, though.
Overall, I adored this book. It was fun, it was easy, it was exhilarating. It made me want to go to a concert as soon as possible. I do wish book music could be real and come to life so that I could listen to what all of these songs were supposed to sound like. It'd be cool if some people could just come together and bring to life all of these songs that are often implemented within various novels and are core parts of the stories. I would recommend this book to readers looking for a fun, short, easy-to-read YA novel!
Main Character: Ruben, Zach
Sidekick(s): Angel, Jon, friends, etc
Villain(s): Homophobia, drugs, misunderstandings, management, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: All of this book was very real to life.
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