**I received an ARC from Netgalley. These are my honest opinions, and in no way was I compensated for this review.**
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde
My Rating: 4.5 stars
Summary: Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself.
Charlie likes to stand out. She’s a vlogger and actress promoting her first movie at SupaCon, and this is her chance to show fans she’s over her public breakup with co-star Reese Ryan. When internet-famous cool-girl actress Alyssa Huntington arrives as a surprise guest, it seems Charlie’s long-time crush on her isn’t as one-sided as she thought.
Taylor likes to blend in. Her brain is wired differently, making her fear change. And there’s one thing in her life she knows will never change: her friendship with her best guy friend Jamie—no matter how much she may secretly want it to. But when she hears about a fan contest for her favorite fandom, she starts to rethink her rules on playing it safe.
Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde, chosen by readers like you for Macmillan's young adult imprint Swoon Reads, is an empowering novel for anyone who has ever felt that fandom is family.
The thing I enjoyed most about this book was the diversity: Charlie is a publicly out bisexual Chinese actress, Taylor is on the autistic spectrum, and Jamie is latinx. All of these things are clearly stated; there is no inferring. For example, Charlie speaks about her Chinese heritage many times, like how her parents are immigrants and how she's not ashamed of them. She also talks about how she realized she was bisexual and how, just because she had never really flirted with a girl, her sexuality never changed. One of my favorite scenes was her telling her boyfriend that she was bisexual after he said bisexuality wasn't a real thing:
"What do you mean you don't believe in bisexuals? They're not mythical creatures," I [Taylor] said. "They're real people, just like you."Despite our society's increasingly progressive attitude, there are still many people who believe that being bisexual is "just a phase" or that once the bi person settles down, they'll switch sexualities. It was really refreshing for Queens of Geek to explicitly state that, even though a bi person is with someone of their opposite gender, they are still bi. After this came one of my favorite scenes in the book:
He squirmed uncomfortably, and Charlie sighed. "Reese, I'm bisexual. Do you believe in me?"
He sat up and stared at her like he was suddenly seeing a whole different person. "You? But you're with me."
"So? I'm still bi."
When Reese finally said something, I wished he hadn't. "But how could you possibly know you're bi? Have you ever been with a girl?"I honestly almost started cheering when I read this! Taylor, despite her high anxiety (more on this later), stood up for her friend and delivered the perfect response. Heterosexuality is so commonly perceived as the "default" sexuality that people refuse to believe you identify as something else without dating someone of your own gender/in between. Another thing I love is that Charlie meets her crush, Alyssa, and dates her.
I remember seeing frustration written all over Charlie's face, and I spoke up. "How did you know you were straight before you were with a girl, Reese?"
Anyway, as I mentioned before, Taylor is on the autism spectrum and has high anxiety. Of course, being at an extremely packed convention should be horrible for her, but she stays strong with the help of Jamie and Charlie. She is also plus-sized, which causes more self-consciousness for her, as she doesn't think she is pretty. Both Taylor and Jamie are obsessed with fandom, causing their strong friendship and later, relationship. Protagonists who are plus-sized, on the autism spectrum, or have anxiety are exceedingly rare, but here Jen Wilde gives us all of these in one character. And not only this, but she also gets a romance!
Although the book deals with fandom issues and the like (which I don't care for because it reminds me of my own superwholock days), I think Queens of Geek dealt with all of the healthy aspects, like how Taylor uses her love for fandom as a safe space for when she gets too overwhelmed. Fandoms can be highly toxic nowadays, but this book portrays the good side of it, the side of it that I was attracted to so long ago.
Queens of Geek was a fun, cute read with so much diversity! Bi Chinese character and a wlw relationship, and a plus-sized, autistic character who has a romance too! I enjoyed this book so much, and I hope all of you read it, especially because it has so many things we need to see in the world today.
About the Author: Jen Wilde is a writer, geek and fangirl with a penchant for coffee, books and pugs. She writes YA stories about zombies (AS THEY RISE), witches (ECHO OF THE WITCH) and fangirls (QUEENS OF GEEK). Her debut series reached over three million reads online and became an Amazon bestseller.
When she’s not writing, Jen loves binge-watching her favorite shows on Netflix, eating pizza, traveling to far away places and going to conventions in Marty McFly cosplay.
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