Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of All the Better Part of Me in exchange for an honest review!

DNF @ 31%.

Every once in awhile you'll read a book & just know it's time to give it up. I hate DNF'ing books, but all of my notes up to this point were negative & I had an inkling that it wasn't gonna get better for me.

Admittedly, I was originally attracted to this book due to it's bisexual flag background. I'm always about good LGBTQ+ rep. However, reading this book, it was extremely clear that it wasn't written by an own-voices author. If it wasn't so painfully obvious, than I would have totally been okay with it, but meh.

There was a ton of talking & not enough doing (get your mind out of the gutters--!!!). It felt like Sinter was just providing info dump after info dump & it was the same internal monologue over and over again! Sinter annoyed the heck out of me, y'all. I love stories about characters figuring out their sexuality & coming out, but wow, Sinter's story just didn't evoke any empathy in me whatsoever. Plus, the writing was extremely flat & I couldn't get emotionally attached to anything that was happening.

I will end this review with a positive note & that is -- I really liked that the chapter headings were all '80's songs.

All the better part of me by Molly Ringleader follows Sinter through the exploration of his identity. Sinter starts off considering himself a straight male, but as things progress through the book, he realizes that isn’t his true identity. I really liked the idea of this book and the transition of the main character which made this a quick read.

I struggled with the rating of this book since it was labeled as a new adult LGBTQIA but it read more like a young adult novel. The conversations between Sinter and Andy are mostly via text message and read younger than the ages of the characters. At the start of this book, it didn’t bother me as much but as the book took on deeper/more adult issues this became more and more apparent of an issue.
The other thing I struggled with is the amount of things going on in this book, between the identity of the main character, the family issues, and the twist towards the end of the book, it turns out to be a lot.

What I did enjoy most about his book is the use of consent between Andy and Sinter. It was clearly laid out at the beginning of them figuring out what they were, that there were boundaries and those boundaries were respected.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing via Netgalley for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this book. I enjoyed the Bi nonsense. It has a lot of Tropes and enjoyed those tropes. Is the plot of this book realistic? Not fully. But sometimes it nice to read fluffy angst where you know everything will work out in the end.

This book does have darker stuff like questioning your sexuality and gaining the courage to come out. There's also the idea of staying closet if you're Bi because it might never come up. It kinda goes over how self-denial is bad and how Sinter is messed up by having done this for the past. So as a Bi-romantic person, I was fine with the rep. He's questioning and messed up with how he was raised so that rep for someone else. Not my personal experience, living my Tumblr live s

Now time for one of my famously weird tangents: There is a British character called Sebastian in this book, which is fiction code for posh arsehole. Sorry, any Sebastian out there. This character is Trans (rep is not a spoiler, yes sometimes a nice surprise but also I'm allowed to talk about it in reviews). In non-expert or in my non-lived experience, the trans rep is fine. Sebastian is his own character. My problem is that being trans means that he picked that terrible name for himself. No arsehole or old fashion parents here to blame. Also, Sebastian speaks very working-class and is roughly the same age as me so I must conclude that he named himself after the crab. My point is that Sebastian is a weirder name than Sinter. It's a Rom-Com myth that they exist. Sebastian is the lead singer of a band, so enjoy that YA Readers.

The rest of the Englishness stuff is fine. It's very rom-com but go ask an English person. Not a lot of British TV movies get made, it definitely sounds more like an indie film than a TV movie. Miniseries are more our thing. It doesn't really matter because its in the effect of a fun plot. Who needs reality?

Overall, I gave this book 5/5 stars for Queers Messing Up. I really enjoyed this book, it's fun Angst which a constant fanfiction reader so I'm here for it. This is the Bi Rom-Com that I've never gonna see when I'm the same age as the character because I'm 26 now and close to the Grave. There are also lots of Queer named characters so I'm happy. I think enjoyment will come down to the tropes you're okay with or like. I know some people will hate the tropes (see Content warnings) in this but I'm fine with the execution. This is not the best book ever, but it made me aw a lot.

There's a playlist for this book made up of 80s songs in the acknowledgements/chapter titles, and as we all love the 80s I made that playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ex31veWRCdLcKdLf1iwdW

CW: Accidental Pregnancy; Adoption; Abortion mentioned; Homophobia; Parents messing you up; Disownment; Being Outed;

Sadly I didn’t finish this book. I just couldn’t connect with it.
Thank you NetGalley and publishers for giving me this book to read. In exchange for my honest review

Thanks to Net Galley and Central Avenue Publishing for giving me the privilege of reading an advance copy of this title.

“All the better part of me” is a lovely romantic comedy with a lead character that makes everyone fall in love with him: men, women, and readers! The major complications of the book appear halfway through and took me by surprise. I don’t want to spoil the plot twists, but difficult issues are deftly handled by writer Molly Ringle.

My favorite thing about this read are the tiny details that bring the characters to life: eyeliner and favorite shirts and flirty texts. Sensitive readers should be warned that the text includes a fair amount of eroticism and Andy’s voice is somewhat overwhelmed by Sinter’s, but these are small critiques that do not detract from a fun, sweet read.

Ok so first things first, I love the cover. Because it's the bi flag, and that just makes me so happy.

I was super excited to read this. A book about a bisexual that actually uses the word bisexual?! So many books/movies/shows imply bisexuality but refuse to label the character, or imply bisexuality and then outright deny it. And when bisexuality is explicitly written about, it's usually about women. Both in fiction and in real life, bi men are underrepresented and ignored, or assumed 'actually gay' or 'actually straight'. (This happens to women as well, but I think it happens particularly to men.) So yeah, just the premise made me excited. Now, I usually prefer to read own voices books, where the writer has similar experiences to the characters. I find that the most authentic stories are written this way. But also, I do strongly believe that writers should write whatever they want, no topics off limit, because if you only wrote your own experiences then you'd be super limited in what you get to explore through fiction. So I went into this with a small backseat worry that it wouldn't feel sincere, or authentic. I'm glad to say that that fear was completely unfounded. I love Sinter, I love Andy, and I loved this story.

Why did I love Sinter so much? Maybe because I grew up in a similar scene. An emo teen figuring things out in a religious environment. The eyeliner, references to noughties emo bands like MCR, I felt an immediate kinship with Sinter. But I'm also so glad this story wasn't another teen coming out story, because I've been finding it hard to find good queer fiction about adults around my own age.

I immediately liked Sinter's voice. I found the book easy to read, his voice distinct, and funny. I found the other characters interesting as well. I felt like, although the book was from Sinter's perspective, I got little snippets of the other characters' lives. They all felt real to me.

And then the plot had me hooked. It was so dramatic, with twists and turns, and I was gripped the whole time. I read the book in two sittings. It would have been one, if I hadn't had to work and sleep! It stomped on my heart, but also made me super happy. I got romance and drama and heartbreak and more drama and more romance and it was just great.

At first I found the text conversations a little jarring. Text convos are not usually something I particularly like in books. But when your two characters are an ocean apart, they need to be able to talk to each other. After a few chapters I got used to the mechanics and they didn't continue to bother me.

I really did love this book, and I'm so happy and grateful I got to read it. I'm looking forward to reading more from Molly Ringle.

I'll leave you with my two favourite lines that made me actually laugh out loud.

'I wasn't gay or bi, just deeply Anglophilic.' 'It wasn't Daniel I was snogging that night, it was the United Kingdom.'

This was not for me. I frequently considered DNFing but I want bi stories to succeed so badly that I kept pushing myself. The thing is, there ARE good bi stories out there—this isn’t one of them. All the characters read like badly drawn outlines of whatever role they were supposed to fill—bisexual character, gay character, straight character, homophobic parents, accepting parents, etc. It’s like someone googled “what issues do bi people face” and then tried to come up with a plot point for each one, which was just ridiculous and occasionally offensive. The writing was stilted & forced (it tried so hard to sound “hip” and “modern” and kept jarring me out of the story), and the plot completely over the top. If you’re looking for a good bi story, look elsewhere.

(Also if you’re hoping for an 80s vibe/nostalgia or some theater geekery, you’ll be seriously disappointed. There’s a few music references, some eyeliner, and one Shakespeare play.)

CW: homophobia

**Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ecopy in exchange for an honest review.**

One thing that attracted me to All the Better Part of Me is that it had a bisexual character in it, and I think Molly Ringle did a fantastic job of representing that in a respectable and realistic manner. This is definitely one of the better books I've read that has bisexual rep in it. Where the story lost me was the pacing. It felt off in places and rushed in others. But I did enjoy Ringle's ability to weave in her different plots together so I'd be interested to read more by her in the future.

There are a lot of things I could talk about here & explain why I didn't enjoy them, like some of the plot-lines or the writing style. But I want to focus on something more important, which is the bisexual rep in the book.

It's not good.

It's not good because Sinter figuring out his sexuality at the age of 25 is framed as Sinter always knowing about it & just being in denial - and that's like a punch to the stomach to all of us in the community who figured ourselves out later in life. Sure, that happens, but there are so many less covered in the media reasons for that to happen!

It's not good because Sinter is constantly pressured to come out. We don't owe anyone our coming out. We literally do not have to do it if we don't feel safe enough. It doesn't mean we belong in the community any less than the out members.

It's not good because Sinter only truly accepts his bisexuality after having sex with a man, as if being bisexual is only about the physical act. As if people who haven't had sex yet, can't be bi or gay. As if we have to prove ourselves in this way.

Basically, it's just hurtful & I regret I had to read the book.

I wanted to love this book so much more than it did. If it had been a story just about Sinter and his developing understanding of both his sexuality and his relationship with his best friend, Andy, I would probably be yelling from the mountaintops about how everyone needed to read it. Instead, we're given a b-plot that's unnecessary and doesn't serve the narrative, his best friend is sometimes a jerk about Sinter not being "out", and using trauma to get two characters together in the end is just an exhausting trope in LGBTQ books and I wish it would stop.

The moments where the story is singularly about Sinter's self-acceptance and his exploration of his deepening feelings with Andy were so beautiful and I wanted so badly for the book to have more of that. I did appreciate the diversity the book offered - a gay Latinx main character, a transgender side character, a bisexual main character, to name a few - and had this book been more about identity, there would have been so many good things to work with. Instead, this book fell flat for me. I enjoyed parts, but not the whole.

I think this book very much could have been written with more nuance if it were written by a queer author (which I do not believe the author is). The fact that Andy and Sinter's main relationship issue is that Sinter does not feel comfortable coming out, the handling of a trans character, the way that Sinter's homophobic parents feel very "How not to behave" instead of feeling like real characters. There are things as a queer person that I could find fault with if I though too hard.

However, I absolutely loved Sinter as a character. Even if parts of him felt a little on the caricature side of being a queer person, I still did relate to his self discovery. (I also did not realize that I was queer until I was in my 20's). I found myself rooting for Sinter the whole time.

I also found this book very easy to read, despite the sometime hard subject matter. The plot sometimes tipped a little too into "Lifetime movie" where just bad thing after bad thing seemed to be happening. But I never particularly found any of it unenjoyable.

I would have liked a little bit more from the characters in this one, but over all I really enjoyed All the Better Part of Me!

**ARC provided by Netgalley and publisher in exchange for review**

As a reader, sometimes we dive into a book with high expectations formed from a pretty cover and excellent blurb. Occasionally, our expectations are met and exceeded. Typically though, we build up the anticipation and possibilities of the story too high for the author to ever meet so the book falls flat and we’re left feeling bereft. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to me with All The Better Part Of Me.

I dug into this novel with high hopes of having great bi-representation. I was excited for an epic love story, but what I got Instead was something lack-luster. There’s hardly any build up in the relationship between the two main characters and it left me wanting more. Sure, they had a friendship prior to getting together, but it almost seemed as though the interest in the male protagonist’s friend came on suddenly and without much depth behind it. There was no meat to their background, just a sprinkling of potatoes.

In the end, I was left wanting. I have no doubt that there are people out there that will adore this book; they’ll find it as lovely as the cover. As for me, I’ll have to give it 2.5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing for providing me with this ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Dnf at 43%. I feel almost apologetic for this, but not quite, as NetGalley can appreciate my having to read and review ARCs in continuous stream and not slogging through something that isn't quite capturing and holding my attention.

That being said, there's a nice, simple fluidity about the author's style of writing. Unfortunately, the something deeper I'm craving isn't there, and the earnest tension I'm craving is nuanced and not really explored.

I don't think this book is for me, but if it manages to keep you hooked after 43% then I'm sure it will be rewarding by the end. Maybe.

The writing was really good and I could totally see what the author was doing here. If for some reason this book captures your attention give it a go. There's a reason why I requested it.

Unfortunately, though the elements of the story were well put together it just wasn't for me. Possibly more to do with where I'm at, than any fault of the actual story or the author.

Would definitely recommend to others.

(4.5 Stars) Sinter and Andy Such a delight to read...and omg bi pride all over this cover. Check out my video review —> https://youtu.be/N5l7FwPhfEQ

I liked this story but it didn’t live up to my expectations to love it. The blurb and the letter written by the publisher excited me and I couldn’t wait to start. But when I did, I quickly realized this wasn’t as appealing as I’d hoped. I hate to admit this but I read a few chapters and stopped for a few days and then went back and read a chapter and stopped. Somewhere around the time Sinter came back to the US, I decided to DNF. And then I pushed a little farther and Sinter’s BFF, Andy, snagged me. Before I knew it, I was not only engaged by Andy, but I started to like Sinter, at least enough to keep going.

Life happens even when we are deeply immersed in a story, and I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that sometimes outside forces in real life heavily influence my mood, which in turn heavily influences my enjoyment of a book. In this case, waiting awhile helped me. And after Sinter was given exciting, or rather shocking, news from Fiona, his English girlfriend, I started to read in earnest. Andy was a wonderful character: a strong friend, a kind lover, a brilliant developer, and a source of many of my tears. No spoilers, but I will say that he does indeed provide tear fodder in both a positive and a negative way. But I loved him even more by the last page.

Sinter? I struggled with Sinter. From his total cluelessness about Andy’s feelings to his free love with Fiona, to his decision to let Andy go to Toyoko, there were so many instances in which I wanted to smack him, I can’t even list them all. But there were positives, including his decision about being a family man. Again, no spoilers, but what happened, and how he managed it, changed my opinion of him. He didn’t fall apart when his world teeter-tottered, and he faced major decisions with grief, good grace, and humor.

The author’s writing style is polished, the main characters interesting, and the host of secondary characters, from friends to family, were diverse and supportive. I advise readers to keep going if, like me, the early chapters don’t grab you. Overall, I can now say I liked the story, and after all my false starts, I enjoyed how it played out. It’s a good story for those who enjoy friends to lovers, sexuality awakening, long-distance lovers, and for those who enjoy a sprinkle of UK in their books.

My main conundrum with this one was the two disparate narratives (the pregnancy and the coming out) which never quite married up. It felt a bit like two novels mashed together and it didn't always gel as well as it could. For a book marketed as being explicitly about bisexuality (hence the cover!) I was disappointed in the weight given to the pregnancy storyline. I felt also that this book suffered from the same problem that many books about mlm written by women has, which is the potential fetishisation of mlm. I'm not sure there is a way around that beyond being aware of it.

Aside from those queries, I found it enjoyable. The narrative voice was always consistent and engaging, and Ringle is a highly competent writer. The book was a quick read in the best ways; the prose flowed and it never jarred, which is a compliment indeed. I think if perhaps it had been marketed as less of a book about bisexuality and more about one man's life experience outside of but including his sexuality, I would have got on with it better. It's a good book and I'm glad I read it.

So, despite the author's note at the start of this book, somehow the first half of this still came off as a straight woman writing her m/m fantasy love story. There was just something about it that didn't feel wholly right. I did like Sinter and Andy, and eventually their story felt more real, but Andy remained a one-dimensional character throughout. There was no depth to him, there was no personality there. He was kind of just THERE, super quick to accept that Sinter liked him despite never having outwardly shown an interest in guys before, he was extremely okay with sleeping with his lifelong best friend without commitments, and he was totally on board with raising a kid he didn't really want. It just felt as though everything was about Sinter and what Sinter wanted and needed out of life and how Andy just kind of molded into that.

Which, like, yeah, he was a great boyfriend, I suppose. But I also just wanted to see something real there. I wanted some actual emotion between the two of them rather than just Sinter suggesting something and Andy immediately being on board.

I loved Fiona and Sebastian and low key wish we could have gotten more of them because they were grand and I need them to live happily ever after. I liked Fiona and Sinter's relationship and the fact that he actually wanted to keep the baby while she didn't. I feel like that's not something we really see a lot of in these kinds of situations; a man wanting to be a father and a woman not. I really loved that.

Overall, it was a decent enough love story, and I think the baby definitely made it more interesting, because before that, the whole first half of the story was rather bland and meh. But baby Verona made everything a tad bit better.

A really sweet friends to lovers book. Poor Sinter is going through a lot, and you just want the best for him.