I've been feeling Out of Character so I read just that

 

Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone. But this book, Out of Character by Annabeth Albert, was the first book that I physically bought from a bookshop in, maybe, 18 months. It was lovely, and I got it from a lovely queer bookshop called The Bookish Type in Leeds (the name there is a clickable link to their website!)

Also, if you want the video version of this post (CLICK HERE)

Yes, it was very exciting, but I bought it because it was by Annabeth Albert, and I was like, “Oh, I know that name”, and I did. I’ve read Conventionally Yours, and maybe I did have to go and check whether I’d made a post about it, and I had. Shall I go wild? Put another link? Let’s do it. Here, read my post on Conventionally Yours. But I remember enjoying the book, and it being an enemies (or rivals) to lovers – who doesn’t love that? And that was why I bought this.

Also, every time I read enemies/rivals to lovers, there’s this one TikTok I always think of. It’s this girl that basically says, “Do you ever read enemies to lovers that’s too much enemy? Like he killed your mum, how are you going to come back from that? Now you just look stupid.” That has nothing to do with the book, I just like the TikTok.

This one was set in the same universe as Conventionally Yours, since it mentions Odyssey cards, and Conventionally Yours was about a road trip to a convention about Odyssey. And also, page 74 of this, Jasper (one of the main characters of this book) mentions that a trip to a convention was cut short by his sister’s illness, and I vaguely remember that happening. But Conrad and Alden do make cameos towards the end of the book.

So the old blurbs and spices on the back of the book told me that this was friends, to enemies, to allies to “much, much more”, which I took to mean lovers. Then it mentions that Jasper Quigley is tired of being everyone’s sidekick and wants to change that. But he needs the help of his ex-best friend, turned king of the jocks, Milo Lionetti. And then it tells us Jasper used to have a secret crush on Milo. Then, the two have to work together to make an upcoming children’s hospital charity ball the best one ever – and also that Milo needed Jasper’s help since his (Milo’s) life was spiralling out of control. So, that immediately told me that the two of them were likely going to work together on this, and because of the proximity, they were likely going to get together in the end, no matter how much they disliked each other in the beginning.

Now, at first, because the blurb mentioned that Milo was an ex-best friend turned king of the jocks, I assumed this was going to be a high schoolers story, because the last book was, but it’s not. I think it was the wording of “kind of the jocks” that threw me off, because these characters are near-post-college age. So, I did have a moment where I was like, “Oh, wait, this isn’t what I was expecting.” This isn’t a complaint or anything, it’s just something I wanted to mention.

As I’ve been editing this post, I realise that a lot of what I’ve written doesn’t have a lot to do with the actual book, story or characters… and I don’t know what that says about this book. But still, as the story progresses, the gig between Jasper in Milo was that Jasper and Milo, obviously, used to be best friends, and Jasper was mega-nerdy. Eventually, Milo became one of the jocks, and because we love a trope, their high school was very much jocks bullying the nerds, and the two of them fell apart because even though Milo didn’t really participate in any of the bullying, he was silent, and therefore compliant, the whole time. And because of this, Milo’s story throughout the book was very much trying to make up for his past mistakes. Although, not just with Jasper, just throughout his life. And Jasper didn’t really have that much of a story, other than helping Milo, and learning to trust him. So, even though the blurb of this book opens with Jasper, as I read the book, it was definitely more Milo’s story than it was Jasper’s.

Given that it followed two characters, it’s no surprise that it’s a dual-POV book, especially since Conventionally Yours was as well, and these dual-POVs were definitely a nice addition. Had it just been Jasper’s POV, we’d have only seen Milo telling him that he wants to change. Also, getting to see Milo’s POV meant that we got to see that he truly meant it. And not only that, but why he meant it, and the lengths he was willing to go to.

So, now for the bits of this book I wasn’t a fan of. I will say, one of them has to do with the cover, and I’ll address that first as it isn’t something I dislike about the story/plot etc, it’s purely a cosmetic thing. The characters on the front cover are ugly. I hate to criticise an author’s cover, especially since it’s a huge achievement to get a book published, but the characters on the cover are just hideous. I’ll have an image of the cover at the end of this post, and you’ll be able to see for yourself what I mean. The thing is, they just don’t look right. And I know exactly what it is. It’s the facial features, they just don’t look… right. I think the cover would have been better if the characters on the cover were just outlines. There’s one point in the book where Jasper calls Milo “the best looking guy in their year”. And looking at this front cover, if he was the best, I dread to think what every other guy looked like.

For the actual thing that I wasn’t a fan of. It might have been explained somewhere in the book, but I don’t remember if it was. But Jasper doesn’t seem to swear. That in itself isn’t an issue, where the issue lies is that he ends up, unironically saying “heck” quite a lot throughout the book. And that gave me a very, “Oh heck, oh fudge guys, what are we going to do?” energy, like you would get from a kids’ TV program. Very that. And this was a very weird contrast since this book gets just about as close to explicit sex scenes as it can without being explicit. Like there’s a part where the book mentions a character being inside another character, and when you pair that with, “Oh gee whiz guys” energy, it’s just two things that do not fit together well. I will say that this isn’t present throughout the whole book, just in a few places, like it wasn’t nearly enough to ruin the book, but it was enough for me to notice that it was weird.

Finally, the book ended like I expected it to. It’s predictable. But like I usually mention, predictable doesn’t mean bad – especially since I live in a utopian world where I want every queer character to be happy all the time. There’s comfort in predictability. When I say that, I mean that, even though there was threat of things not ending well in the book, the fact that there was so much padding around the bad things, I never felt like things were going to end badly.

So, the book was nice. It wasn’t snatch my wig off, Alyssa Edwards tongue pop amazing, but it was nice. And I feel like that’s all I can say about it. It did have its weird moments with the “oh heck” energy, but I did enjoy it overall. It was a cute (sort of) enemies-to-lovers.

Also, don’t worry, I won’t be so wild with the links in my future posts lmao.

Okay, bye!