Pages:
319
Publisher:
Hot Key Books
Release
Date: 3rd
September 2015
Edition:
UK e-proof,
NetGalley review copy
A
funny and moving love story about friends, first love and self-discovery by the
Queen of Teen 2014.
When
sixteen-year-old Toria Bland arrives at her new school she needs to work out
who her friends are, all in a crazy whirl of worry, exam pressure and anxiety
over fitting in. Things start looking up when Toria meets the funny and
foul-mouthed Polly, who’s the coolest girl Toria has ever seen. Polly and the
rest of the ‘alternative’ kids take Toria under their wing. And that’s when she
meets the irrestible Nico Mancini, lead singer of a local band – and it’s
instalove at first sight! Toria likes Nico. Nico likes Toria…but then there’s
Polly.
Love
and friendship have a way of going round in circles.
I feel head over heels in love
with All of the Above and it’s
definitely one of my favourites of the year so far.
James Dawson is a known advocate
for diversity and he really puts his money where his mouth is in All of the Above. This novel has characters
from across the LGBTQIA+, but very importantly, it features an asexual
character! This was the first time I'd never seen this openly in a YA novel and
I cheered. And then Toria is mixed race as her mum is Indian and her dad white
and one of the characters has an eating disorder. The portrayal of the eating
disorder felt very important. Dawson highlights the stigma of an eating
disorder – and other mental illnesses – and how it is never seen as serious as
a physical illness until it’s noticeable by someone else. The experience of the
characters in All of the Above demonstrated
the danger in that and just how grave it can be.
Even though I’ve only read one
other of Dawson’s books – Under My Skin –
I feel like he really found his voice and his style with All of the Above. Toria’s narration felt
authentic and current and so incredibly real.
All of the characters are so much more than what they are to each other. I loved that Toria wasn’t just a part
of the story going on with Polly, Nico and the rest of the gang, she has a
separate life with parents, an online presence with friends and a fandom, and
she loves making digital art and writing poetry. Toria’s poetry was a really
unexpected element of the novel and I really loved it. Sadly, it wasn’t quite
formatted in the e-proof I read, but I was still able to enjoy and appreciate
it.
It would be easy to dismiss Toria’s
story as an ‘issues’ book, but it’s really not. It just so happens that ‘issues’
happen to people in everyday life. It made way for a conversation about labels
as Toria struggled to understand what she felt and then the pressure to define
what that was. Labels carry weight for the person being labelled. They have
pressures and expectations to conform to what makes up that label and it’s
pretty ridiculous really – why should you have to define your feelings or
yourself for others?
All
of the Above is
heartbreaking, hopeful and empowering and I hope we get more of this kind of contemporary
from James Dawson in the future.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hot Key
Books for the review copy.
Sophie
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