Spin Me Right Round might have my least favourite main character this year

Today, I’m writing about Spin Me Right Round by David Valdes, and this is another one that I have no idea about how I came across it. Or I don’t remember at least. I think it was just one of those that was “Readers of X would also like Y”, but I really couldn’t tell you. Something I’ve also noticed that there are multiple covers to this book. There’s the version that I’ve got – and the version I’m attaching as an image at the end of this post – and the other one, where the main character is falling in the swirl, with a bunch of 80s stuff around him.

I will give a content warning here. There is raging homophobia in this book. Like, almost constant. Also, I’m not explicitly going to spoil this book, but there is a point in this post that would be a spoiler, and I’ll flag that up when it comes.

Our blurbaroni pizza says that all Luis wants is to go to prom with his boyfriend, something his “progressive” high school still doesn’t allow. Not after what happened with Chaz Wilson. But that was ages ago, when Luis’s parents were students. It would neve happen today, right? However, when a hit on the head knocks him back in time to 1985 and he meets the doomed young Chaz himself, Luis concocts a new plan: get this guy his first real kiss. Which may be a challenge, because a conservative school in the 80s isn’t the safest place to be out – especially with homophobes (aka Luis’s estranged father) running the show. Luis is trying to figure out how to not make things worse while also trying to make it back to the present day.

So, wild in concept. My immediate questions from reading the blurb were along the lines of, if he’s going back to the 80s, is he going to run into his parents, and what’s that going to be like? If a knock on the head sent him to the 80s, how is he getting back? And, is he going for a butterfly effect kind of thing, where maybe he rectifies what happened with Chaz, hoping it would make the present better? Or maybe it was going to be the case that he was going to get to the past and slowly realise that there’s no point trying to change the past, like maybe it would be one of those lessons.

Now, I feel bad opening up with something negative, but right in the first chapter… the way Luis spoke (by which I mean the character’s voice) felt very Riverdale and very I’m not like other girls. And while it’s fine having characters that are a little bit annoying, or even characters that are flawed – that makes them real – but Luis… I don’t know, in this first chapter he reads like what someone thought a teenager was like. Still, we do open in this first chapter with Luis saying that he practically rules this boarding school of 200 kids he goes to, and that this school still has a dress code for male and female students, and Luis wants to get this rule of no same-sex dates at prom removed, so that he and his boyfriend, Cheng, can go together. He doesn’t manage to get it done, so he runs home – he mentions he lives off-campus.

We find out that his father isn’t in the picture, obviously, because it says that on the blurb, and we do, briefly, get the story of what happened between Luis’s mother and father, and the story ends, because it’s told in Luis’s voice, with him saying that she (his mother) tells him that the state of their relationship is one of those things that he’ll understand when he’s older. And then Luis finishes up by simply saying “fat chance”. And I think from these opening chapters was that the author didn’t really do Luis any favours in making me like him – or want to like him. He just came off like a bit of a selfish twat. And I’ll say, because I’m stubborn, I’m not one to DNF a book, unless it’s truly horrific garbage, so, even though I didn’t like Luis as a character I still finished the book.

Also, to mention the bit when he runs home again, the next day, he blows up at Cheng about it, and we get a line that made me physically cringe: “It’s never a good idea to put words in someone’s mouth, especially in a fight, but, sis, I am in a mood.” What am I supposed to do with that? Luis gave me the vibes of that one TikTok sound that’s taking the piss out of the skinny white gays, the one that’s like, “Yes, daddy werk and I oop Charli XCX snatch my WIG!” He gave me vibes of those white twinks that makes their personality drag race vernacular, despite the fact he’s Latinx.

Anyway, then like 40 pages in, Luis gets hit on the head and goes back to 1985, and the literal first person he runs into is his dad – Gordo – and he gets accused of being a townie. I did think this introduction to the 80s section was quite interesting. I do like it, in general, as a concept, and I for the most part I had fun reading it. I do think that a little more time could have been spent acclimating, because, even though Luis’s situation forced him to hit the ground running, I’d have liked just a little bit more time spent introducing us. I’m assuming the Luis was born after the year 2000, so I would have expected he’d be in more shock. For example, he spots his mother in one of his classes, and it’s sort of just a, “Oh, there’s my mum”, kind of thing. I would have thought he’d have been more shellshocked. As interesting as it was to read, I just felt like Luis took to everything too easily. And eventually, he surmises that his job is to save Chaz Wilson.

There were a few times I noticed where the author used italics to signify direct thoughts that Luis had, but then there were also time they used brackets, so I did wonder why use both, why not just stick to one?

The actual content of the book, things like pace, and what happens – the plot, you could even say – were all fine. Relatively inoffensive. There was nothing in it that was overwhelmingly slay mode, and nothing that made me want to stop reading, but that’s just because I’m stubborn and refuse to DNF a book. There were definitely a few sweet moments, like Luis befriending the roommates he’s forced to have, Ernie, and the talks that he ends up having with Chaz – this book wasn’t all bad, let me be clear.

And now even though I’ve already spent so long complaining about him, my biggest problem with the book was Luis. Like, he thinks he’s hot shit the whole book, and nothing ever changes that. And I guess you could give him points for his unshakeable confidence as a Latinx teen who has been transported to 1985, but even though there were points where he mentions missing what’s in his time for him, because he was so unshakeably confident, I never really felt like those moments of weakness for him ever meant anything. And now for the bit that would be considered a spoiler: Even when he almost gets murdered, he bounces back like he didn’t go through a traumatic experience.

Finally, for the ending… Since my biggest problem in this book was its main character, Luis, he was also an issue I had with the ending. The ending was nice, I’ll give the book that. It was a happy, utopian ending. And you know, more often than not in YA books, the protagonist will go through something that teaches them a lesson. However, I don’t feel like Luis learned anything. That was my big issue with the ending, Luis was completely unchanged. He had a problem in the start of the book, and by going back in time, he managed to change the future and get what he wanted. And good for him that he got what he wanted, but I don’t know, even though Luis’s quest was to apparently save Chaz, it all felt very selfish in the end. I just wish that Luis would have changed, or grown, at the end… but he didn’t.

This book was just really disappointing to me. The concept was fine, it was just a shame that at no point did I really like Luis as a character.

Okay, bye!