Reviews

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

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bouvier's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

jagic's review against another edition

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3.0

This book is excellent but also bad. Writing style is everything to me but I wasn't so connected to the story. This is essentially what I thought the first book is going to be. I am not that disappointed, I didn't really like the first book that much.

I only feel this way about Dante. So what if I don’t really like boys—I only like Dante because he’s Dante.

I am 99% sure that Aristotle is demisexual, I mean did you even read the first book? You are welcome.

But Dante took us both out of our sadness when he said, “So, if we’re screwed, do
you think that sometime, we could, like, screw?”
“There’s a thought. It’s not like we can get pregnant.” I played that line very
casually. All I could think about was making love to him. But I wasn’t going to tell
him that I was going fucking crazy. We were boys. And all boys were like this,
whether they were gay or whether they were straight—or if they were whatever.

No, just no...
This is THE quote I hated and it ruined the story for me. As someone who is on asexual spectrum this is really hurtful. I know this is Ari thinking in late 1980s but we have to bear in mind that this was written in last couple of years by a gay man and is a sequel to a famous LGBT+ YA novel...