Title: Leah on the Offbeat
Author: Becky Albertalli
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub Date: April 24, 2018
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 343
Source: Purchased
Genre(s): YA, Contemporary, Romance
Rating: ★★★★
[Goodreads] ● [Amazon]

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Synopsis from Goodreads:

Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst.

When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.

So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.

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My mini-review:

“Leah.” Mom shakes her head. “You’ve got to stop doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Burning everything to the ground whenever something goes wrong.”

I remember raving about how heckin’ relatable Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda was. But, like, Leah… she is relatable as heck. Did someone turn me into a fictional character? It’s almost uncanny. All I can say is that I’m quite envious (and very happy for) the generation of young readers that will grow up seeing contemporaries like this one. Stories where they can see themselves in all of the characters.

Becky sure knows how to write ’em.