The Breaths We Take follows seventeen-year-old Ben. The story is set in 1992, and well, he really wants a boyfriend. That is at least the first impression we get from him, as he sexualizes every guy he can find as soon as his eyes falls upon them. His organized life turns on its head when his sick grandfather comes and lives with his family.

I don’t really know how to write this, but the story the author is trying to give us here does not reach its potential. I love a cute, fluffy lgbt+ read, with some drama and family on the side, but here the writing, the characters and the plot just falls flat.

Ben is thrown into a match up scheme between two of his best friends, and it goes (surprise surprise) horribly wrong. And it is fine to have misunderstanding, but these guys here had been friends for years and that erupted into nothing over something so stupid?

Ben is also starts working at this elder center, and at first he doesn’t want to because old people makes him uncomfortable? I guess every person and character is different, but there was this big revolutionary thing where he realized that old people is actually just… people. I guess there was supposed to be a lesson in there not just for Ben, but for the reader. But it does not really come across well. It is just like everything else in this book: flat.

Ben gets a boyfriend in this book, and while they were cute there was so much unnecessary drama. I wanted to ship them, but I really felt it was so random they ended up together. What made Ben and his boyfriend like each other? Because even after finishing I’m still not sure except that they think the other one is hot.

There was also some homophobia in here, but that is called out. But again, it was there for the drama. I know the story was set in 1992 and everything, but where the homophobia came from made me roll my eyes. I don’t want to spoil, but it was really just stupid. The book is trying to show us what lgbt+ teens has gone through “over the decades”, but I felt it didn’t really give us anything.

There were parts of the story that were okay. I loved Ben’s grandfather and Herman (which is another old man). The story itself wrapped up okay, but overall I was not impressed. Ben was too boring, and the writing was not really my style.

The book is not bad, it was just okay. I would never recommended it to anyone, as I know of so much better lgbt+ stories. This story doesn’t give anything to the reader, it was not as if I had high expectations going into this (as I had never heard about it before), but I did hope I was going to get more than this.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing me with an eArc.

Just For Clicks is about Claire, her whole life her mom has blogged about her and her twin Poppy. They also have a pretty popular youtube channel. She is basically famous, and really really tired of it. Claire is ready to be out of the social media world, she is tired of the world watching everything she is doing.

The cast of characters in the book is decent. Claire is as a convincing character, she makes questioning choices, but doesn’t every teen? I feel like the other characters gets second seats though. Poppy and their mother is just seen through Claire’s eyes, which is mostly negative throughout the book. I wish there were more moments of them as a family together, before Claire really started to dislike the media life. The only character that is seen in a positive light is of course the love interest, but that didn’t really surprise me. He was okay. Not bad though, totally okay.

The plot has a nice flow, the emails and texts we get in between chapters are a nice touch. The story was plotted out nicely, considering Claire’s future and figuring out what she wants and who she wants to be.
There was however one “big secret” in the story that… well.. annoyed the crap out of me. I’m not going to spoil, but it is a really overused plot device. I can kind of relate to this trope as well, IRL, and every time this shows up the reaction is always the same. And it really makes me roll my eyes. It works out, ish. That was my least favorite part of the book and the times before and after this part of the plot were my favorites. I really wish that this part of the story had not been there at all and that the author had found some other way to tell it.
Well. Well.

There were parts of the book that was really sweet and hilarious, the ending wrapped up nicely and I even teared up once. Wops. This was after being sooo annoyed after the plot I talked about above, haha.

Overall, a sweet (but a bit over the top) YA contemporary! It went by really quickly, so it was really something to read if you want to relax. 3 out of 5 stars, meaning: I liked it.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing me with this eArc.