Book review: Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli (Spoiler Free)

I discovered Leah on the Offbeat the same way many people did: through Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Simon vs. is such an amazing book, I devoured it in two days, and immediately followed the author, Becky Albertalli, on all social media accounts. I was definitely planning on reading Leah on the Offbeat – a story with an overweight bisexual female protagonist was something that I, as a bisexual overweight woman, was desperate to read. But with university deadlines and exams looming, I wasn’t in a mad rush to read it. It was only through a preorder offer that I was made to preorder it – if you preordered the book you got a free signed postcard from Becky Albertalli, with a drawing of a scene of the book on it. And I’m so glad I preordered it.

I devoured this book in the same way that I devoured Simon Vs., sitting in bed and not moving on the promise of just reading one more chapter. The characters all develop from where they were at the ending of Simon Vs., going through the stresses of senior year and the threat of change that is graduating and going to college. There are so many romantic moments where I squealed (minor spoiler, but Bram and Simon promposal, anyone?), including one moment where I physically jumped up and down because it was too perfect and cute. And you have to understand, I hate physical exertion – the book is just that good.

I love Albertalli’s ability to write such a diverse range of characters with different experiences as well – Leah is bi, but her experience of her sexuality is not the same as other bi characters within the story, which is brilliant to see. There’s also examples of incidental representation of LGBTQ+ identities peppered throughout, such as a gender nonbinary character who uses they/them pronouns that Leah and Abby meet on their Spring Break trip to visit UGA. None of it feels forced, it just feels like a true representation of the world.

The thing that really set the tone for the book is the dedication at the start:

‘For the readers who knew something was up, even when I didn’t’

Becky Albertalli has spoken candidly about not realising that Leah was bisexual before readers responded to Simon Vs. talking about Leah’s bisexuality – she didn’t write Leah as a straight character, but she didn’t deliberately write her as a bi character, either. She’s said that she knew that if she were to write a third book in the Simonverse, it would be about Leah, so seeing this side of her that the readers saw was a great way to explore Leah’s character.
Some people have criticised this book, saying that they found Leah an annoying character that they couldn’t relate to all of the time, and there were things that she said or did that were aggravating to them. Whilst I understand this criticism, I liked this part of Leah – she’s not a perfect person, she’s just graduating high school, she’s 18 and still figuring out how the world works and how she fits into it. This is what makes her experience feel like an authentic teenage experience. A lot of the struggle she goes through in the book is figuring out how she fits in to the world – she has herself sussed out, but her place in the world is a little harder to find, especially when the world she knows is changing so rapidly. There were moments when I didn’t agree with Leah, especially in some of the things she says to Abby when they have a fight, and the fact that these things didn’t get resolved and Leah didn’t apologise for them, whilst somewhat frustrating, showed that Leah is human. She’s not a finished person (if such a thing is ever achievable) and it shows.
This book is an amazing ending to the Simonverse, I love it and I know I will be rereading it many times. I really hope the “trend” of representation seen within this book and other YA currently being published is something that is here to stay.

Rating: 4/5

The benefits of journaling

The other day Daniel J Layton uploaded a video in association with Penguin Platform on their YouTube channel about how great journaling is for your mental health. I’ve been thinking about this for a while – it was something that was recommended to me by a counsellor for my mental health a while back, and I recommend it to everyone because it has helped me so much, so I thought I would share my thoughts on the matter.

I’ve written a diary for years – I used to pretend to write by scribbling a pen over paper in squiggly lines before I could even write, and I’ve had my fair share of countless products marketed as secret diaries and journals over the years. They weren’t often very successful though – I would lose the key to the padlock keeping them shut (I will never know what seven year old me really thought about her crushes), or my password journal would run out of batteries and keep me locked out, or I would simply get bored and stop. One year, when I was about 8 or 9, my mum made my brother and me keep daily diaries over the course of the summer holiday, and in late August, I wrote ‘I read through my diary today. It’s pretty boring.’ That one sentence pretty much sums up my early experience with journaling.

When I was in my first year of secondary school in 2010, I tried to make it my New Year’s resolution to write in my diary more, mainly as a way to remember things later in life. And I did; I wrote sporadic entries over the course of years seven to twelve. I used it when I was happy to record great things that had happened, and when I was sad, angry, or upset to vent my feelings and work through them. The physical action of writing things down really helped me work through what I was experiencing, and process my feelings.

I reached a real low point in my mental health around year twelve, going through the stresses of the IB and University expectations from the school I was at, and I went to a counsellor for a while. She asked if I wrote in a diary, and if I found that it helped, and I said that yes, I did, and that it did help. She recommended that I write every night, and at the very least, just write one positive thing that had happened to me during the day, and if I was writing anything else, to finish with a positive thing. It could be something nice that someone said to me, that someone did for me, or just a nice experience that I had that made me feel good. Ever since then, I have written a journal entry every night, which means I’ve been daily journaling for three and a half years now, and the difference it has made to my mental health is astounding.

These five notebooks are full of nothing but my thoughts, which is kind of crazy to consider

It’s by no means been a cure for my mental health issues – nothing really is a full cure – but it has helped me so much. I have a much more positive outlook now, and I sleep far easier having vented my feelings on paper. A few times, when I’ve been unable to write on paper for whatever reason, I’ve typed it on my phone, which doesn’t have quite the same effect for me, but it does still help. Having something that takes 100% of my attention, away from a screen with constant notifications distracting me, and facilitates me processing the events of the day in my own time, is invaluable to me. And now I have a record of every day of the past three and a half years of my life. I’ve started using my journals as scrapbooks as well, sticking in tickets and pictures, which makes it so nice to look back through, especially to look at the positive events of each day.

Now, I need to acknowledge that I am in the very fortunate position of liking to write. I have always liked to write, and given my degree subject and hopes for the future, I hope I always will. So journaling, whilst a challenge in routine, was not necessarily a challenge in task for me. I’m well aware that some people will hate journaling, they’ll write two words and set fire to their notebook, never to write another word again. But this is just a note to say give it a go, if you haven’t already. You don’t have to go as hard as I do, maybe try once a week, if that’s more your speed. But whatever you do, give it a try. You might like it.