I really didn’t expect him to be such an important and interesting character – he turned out to be much more three-dimensional than I thought!Īnother character of note is Frances’ mom, who doesn’t play a huge role in the plot but is present throughout. Like Daniel Jun, Aled’s lifelong friend and the head boy at Frances’ school. This books has some other really incredible characters as well. I don’t know how Alice Oseman did it so perfectly, but she did. And even though it was never romantic, Frances and Aled’s relationship wasn’t downplayed at all both of them are incredibly important in each other’s lives. I just wanted to say- We don’t.”ĭo you know how rare it is to see a male-female friendship as complex and important as this one in a YA novel that doesn’t even have hints of romantic tension? And yet I was so invested in their relationship! I loved that they clicked immediately and helped each other and loved each other, and it gave me so many warm fuzzy feelings. There’s a point where Frances addresses the reader and says: “You probably think that Aled Last and I are going to fall in love or something. Specifically, the fact that the relationship doesn’t turn romantic. I want to talk a little bit about the relationship between Frances and Aled, because it was one of the driving forces of the novel and one of my favorite things about it. And his character growth throughout was incredible to watch. Figuring him out was one of the joys of this novel.
He contradicts himself – he can be both selfish and kind, both closed off and affectionate. Aled is such a fascinating and complex character. Like her, he feels alone in a lot of ways, like he can’t show parts of himself to the rest of the world, like he doesn’t have anyone to rely on. Um, okay, long personal rant over, let’s talk about some of the other characters.Īled Last is the shy, brilliant, anxious creator of Universe City, Frances’ favorite podcast.
There’s something so powerful about seeing a character that you relate to on such a deeply personal level, which makes everything that Frances goes through feel so much more important. My attitude has always been “work hard now and it’ll all pay off and someday you’ll get to enjoy it,” but eventually the someday is going to be now and I’m going to have to figure out who I am outside of school and grades and classes, just like Frances.Īnd through this all, she feels like there’s this other side of her that nobody sees – the side that’s obsessed with an obscure little podcast and basically has zero chill. That was me in high school, and to an extent it’s me now in college. At one point she says something about how she doesn’t think she’s good at anything except school and. She’s so focused on studying and doing well in school that she often doesn’t let herself enjoy anything else, and she places much of her self-worth on her grades and test scores. really didn’t expect to relate so hard to Frances. At school, she’s head girl and always the top of her class, but at home she wears weirdly patterned leggings and draws fanart for her favorite podcast, Universe City. As such, she feels like she has two different selves that nobody really knows. “That was literally the boy-girl version of ‘no-homo,’ but I appreciate the sentiment.”įrances Janvier , the main character and narrator, is a seventeen year old bisexual, biracial, British-Ethiopian study machine who has spent much of her life aiming for the goal of going to Cambridge. So this review is going to get a little gushy and emotional. I think I went through every emotion that a human being can in the span of 400 pages, and if there was a rating higher than five stars, I would give it without hesitation. It was the book I needed when I was in high school, and it’s exactly the book I need now in college. This felt like exactly the book that I needed in my life. What was I doing in all that time that was more important than this book? Which means I’ve spend two years – TWO YEARS – just going around, living my life, while this books exists in the world and I wasn’t reading it. So this book has been out for a little over two years now. Will they have the courage to show everyone who they really are? Or will they be met with radio silence? In a world determined to shut them up, knock them down, and set them on a cookie cutter life path, Frances and Aled struggle to find their voices over the course of one life-changing year. You probably think that they are going to fall in love or something. Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying.Įveryone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As.
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