If You Change Your Mind except I hate summer (the SEASON)

  

Today I’m talking about If You Change Your Mind by Robby Weber. So I know for a fact I originally saw this on the readers who like x also like y bit on the big Jeff Bezos website but didn’t buy it. I ended up getting it from the queer bookshop that’s in Affleck’s in Manchester, simply because I was in Manchester for something and took a wander round.

Our blurb says that sometimes love has its own script. Harry wants nothing more than to write Hollywood screenplays. The first step? Winning the screenwriting competition that will guarantee admission into the college of his dreams. With his priorities set, he’s determined to spend his summer free of distractions – also known as boys – and finish his script. After last year, Harry is certain love only exists in the movie anyway. But then the cause of his first heartbreak, Grant, returns with a secret that could change everything – not to mention, there’s a new boy in town, Logan, who is so charming and sweet, he’s making Harry question everything he knows about romance. As Harry tries to keep his emotions in check and stick to his perfect plan for the future, he’s about to learn that life doesn’t always follow a script.

Did I know exactly what the vibe I was getting from this book before reading it? No. Other than just romance I had no idea. But you know how hardbacks don’t have a blurb on the back and just have quotes from other authors and random outlets? Well, a bunch of the ones for this book mentioned the phrase “summer read”, so I took that to mean that perhaps this book wasn’t going to be all that heavy, and that it would be a nice, easy read.

The very first thing you read about is the main character saying the best thing about summer is the hot guys but mentions that this summer for him is like a Calvin Klein ad – purely visual – because he has like two weeks to finish his screenplay. Homeboy Harry is at this beach club in Florida with his family, and he mentions that after Grant, this competition is his only chance to get into USC with how bad their break up was. A little later he meets Logan in the locker room, because Logan has been locked in his locker without his clothes, saying it’s some sort of hazing from the other lifeguards. Then at the end of the chapter, Grant is magically back at this party, so Harry does the mature thing and pushes him into a pool. Although Grant kind of deserves it as you find out almost instantly that he left and broke things off with Harry over text.

You see bits of Harry’s screenplay throughout the book which I thought was cute. Obviously, it was there to reflect what was going on throughout the book as the main character got into a superhero situation oddly similar to Harry’s own, where he found himself basically caught between Grant and Logan, but then also this third guy (sort of) Foster. Definitely in the first 100-odd pages, I was team Logan. I have no concrete reasoning for this other than the fact I think I just liked him more than Grant and Foster. Did the other two particularly do anything wrong? No. I think I just liked Logan more. I don’t know what it was, he had that kind of innocent and naïve personality – I think he was very much the boy next door type.

In lieu of this being a summer book there isn’t obviously all that much in terms of a plot or anything. There’s Harry between Grant and Logan, him stressing over the screenplay, then also this girl, Penny, says at one point she’s applying to USC – which is the one Harry has his eyes on, so he’s also assuming that two people from their school will get it. So, while things are happening, there’s not really a plot.

For all the characters in this book, I think a good job was done in fleshing them out. I think that has something to do with the fact it was a things just happen kind of book, since there was no major plot, it meant there was the space to actually do it. Harry was a good example of a complex character. And I think it was quite interesting just how complex he was given that there’s no plot. Like, there were points where he did things that I could actively be like, “Hmm, sir? Maybe this decision you’re making isn’t the best one for you.” He was a flawed character, which is a wild shock for someone who is seventeen.

In terms of tropes, because this is romance, and I love a romance trope. There was the thing of second-chance love, the whole thing with Grant coming back. I’m definitely mixed when it comes to second chance love. For me, it’s one of those that it all depends on the context. What happened for the couple to break up in the first place? Did one person hurt the other? How did they do it? And I think because of that, and my feelings towards the trope, that is why I was so team anyone but Grant. I do realise that when it comes to second chance love, sometimes the couple only broke up together in the first place because of circumstance, or there was some kind of blockade. I think it’s when one person actively hurt the other, that when I’m like, “No, thank you!”

There was this one bit I liked towards the end of the book, where one character was moving to London, and they tell Harry he can visit them, and they can show him Notting Hill and King’s Cross Station. Now let me just say, as someone who isn’t from London, lives on the other side of the country, but has been to King’s Cross Station a few times… Reading that was wild. It’s just a train station, not even a particularly big one at that. Like, there’s a little tourist spot where you can take a photo with a trolley for Platform 9¾. But other than that, it’s just a station like any other in the UK.

To go back to the bits of the screenplay. Like I said before, I know it was to sort of reflect what was going on within the story itself. My issue with it was that the bits of the screenplay only ever came up between chapters, so not all that often, and because of that, there were definitely times where I found it a little hard to follow. I found myself reading it, but not remembering who was who, and what the relationships between everyone was. I understand that Harry writing the screenplay, and that was showing you the progress he was making, and it was nice to actually be able to see what he was writing, I just don’t know how much I needed it.

And now, something nobody asked for: my ranking of the two slash three guys Harry gets caught between. In third, we’ve got Grant. Nobody asked for this ranking, but for me, Grant was just that one who was in the past and I didn’t need him in the present – even though he made for good drama in the book. Second, we have Foster. Foster is definitely the one that’s in the book the least out of the three, but he definitely grew on me as the book went on. He was almost similar to Grant in that he was also in the past, but he was a lot more minor. Then in first we have Logan. I will stand by that I am team Logan on for this book. Maybe it’s because he was newer to Harry, so there’s some recency bias there, but I stand by my point.

And since this was pedalled as a summer read, I was fine with how it ended. It read like how I’d expect a summer read to be. I don’t have any problems with it in that regard. It’s the case of, the book delivered on what was promised by all of the quotes on the cover said. Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s one of these books that’s probably going to sit on my shelf and then I’ll re-read it years down the line when I don’t remember what happened.

Okay, bye!