I wanted to like this. I really did. But I cannot handle how badly this was written, coupled with the homophobia and bullying and awful stereotypes of queer kids.

I, unfortunately, did not enjoy the writing of this novel at all. I was drawn in by the cute title, but the storyline felt just, slightly, empty for me. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to read this novel, but this was just not the book for me. I hope it finds its audience elsewhere.

Absolutely awful - badly written (read like fanfiction or stream of consciousness wishful thinking).

Bad and unlikable characters, terrible representation of LGBTQ+ relationships. Homophobic bullying, unresolved religious judgement and completely unrealstic story. I read a lot of YA fiction, and I've read SO MANY MORE better books that tackle this subject.

The only saving grace is that it's really short.

This book was very sweet! I love a good queer romance, and this definitely was! I love Mack's journey as she figures things out and finds herself-very relatble!

This is a cute YA novel, centered around a cute tomboyish girl named Mack. This book deals with all the normal "coming out" topics - like your classmates finding out, your parents, and the girl you secretly have a crush on. In this particular book, like it says in the summary, this coming out experience comes with a bit of a dare. Mack is goaded into trying to date every cheerleader in the school. A religious school at that.

Along the way she ends up falling for someone. I won't say who, but I can say that I thought it was leaning toward one girl but got tricked! In a good way though.

I did find it a bit strange that everyone seemed to want to help Mack out in dating all the girls, even her teachers. That seemed a little too far fetched.

Overall, a cute story that was a fun little read.

Oh Queerleaders is a great story.

I love LGBT fiction. I love YA fiction. Put those hands together and you have Queerleaders. The story of Mack and how she is forced to come out by the arrogant and narrow-minded bullies in her school and how she manages to lose herself and find herself all at once.

It is a story of friendship and a story of self discovery. Mack is shown to be a warts and all brilliant protagonist whose downfall is due to her own indulgence and greed but gosh I loved her.

If you love stories of the LGBT variety and you want something completely heart-warming then Queerleaders is the book for you.

Queerleaders by MB Guel is available now.

For more information regarding MB Guel (@MB_Guel) please visit her Twitter page.

This wasn't the best LGBT+ book I've read. I think that it may be a fast read, but there's a lot of issues.

There's homophobia, forced outings, and even harmful stereotypes included. I don't especially recommend this book.

This book was interesting but weird?
I didn't really like it but I also didn't dislike it, it was pretty average. First of all who doesn't love a cheer leader love story and better yet a gay one? From the description this book had so much potential and I thought this could be a cute story about coming out and finding love for the first time but instead it fell flat and was a bit cringy in how the cheer leaders were acting over Mack. I didn't really like Mack's character but I did like Lila and I really thought that she was into Mack. Veronica's character grew on me as she stepped out of the popular girl stereotype.
Although I wasn't a fan of how the story developed I must say that the ending was actually super cute but the constant homophobia and bullying was a bit difficult to read through as I was only expecting a cute wlw story.
* I received an arc copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review *

"I'm sure once you take the hairnet off she's very attractive!"

Mack is a closeted gay gal navigating her senior year in high school. Super content to be coasting through her final year with her best friend, Lily. Mack has a crush on the head cheerleader, Veronica. She thinks Veronica is amazing and beautiful and smart and sweet. Lily thinks Veronica is not any of those things.

Mack decides to write a note to Lily describing all the reasons why she likes Veronica. Unfortunately, that note gets into the hands of the wrong person and suddenly Mack's senior year shapes up to be quite a bit different.

This was very young feeling. Rightfully so, as we are dealing with a main character who has never even kissed a girl before. It was cute to watch her experience things for the first time and then witness her hormones take over with her newfound knowledge of making out. But those hormones cause some issues when she tries to juggle more than one cheerleader at a time. Hey! She's only a human teenager finding herself!

But in finding herself, she ends up hurting others.

This was a quick and entertaining read. There were some funny lines that made me laugh out loud. And it was surprising in the unexpectedness of it. I thought it was heading one way and didn't go there.

I recommend this to people who like to read about romance, teenagers, coming out, coming of age, best friends, cheerleaders, high school cliques, and Macbeth.

I got an ARC of this book.

I got this book, because iam had it. I am that easily swayed to read a book. I knew nothing else about it except that the title was a pun. I am a simple queer. Give me a dad joke and a queer love story (preferably with cowboys or with a cute dog sidekick) and I am in.

The book wasn't great. It wasn't terrible, but the bad outweighed the good. The writing itself wasn't all that bad. It was typical YA stuff. Nothing earth shattering, but better than a lot of things I have read. The issue with mostly the plots and characters.

Mack: of course the main character would be a more masculine lesbian. That is so much easier to digest for people. What I would not give for a femme/femme pairing. Give me two girls who do each other's nails and then go "fuck, I think I love her". Though I do love butch characters, it just was annoying in the sense that there were so many tropes and stereotypes that you have the butch character messing up relationships exactly like how the boys do in YA books. You could replace Mack with a guy and the book would barely have to change. Her character is pretty flat. She is obsessed with a cheerleader, but then through the book learns that she really doesn't like her? I just didn't buy the romance. 

Lila: She was totally in love with Mack. There is no denying it, except in this world love is based on physical attraction. So their love is totally discredited since there was no "spark". I'm sorry. I ship Lila and Mack hardcore. They are there for each other, they trust each other, they care for each other. 10/10 best relationship in the book. (Hell, Lila actually texts with Mack's mom. It is a match made in heaven.)

Chad: Can you just guess his role and personality? Enough said. 

Plots: Mack is outed in front of the whole school. Outing her is never really punished in any way. It is the whole catalyst for the wonderfully YA idea of hooking up with every cheerleader to prove I don't know what. There is constant homophobia. It generally stays in the area of physically harmless pranks. It read as very middle school. I had similar pranks played on me in middle school. So it was really boring for me, but could be really triggering for someone else. The homophobia is never addressed. It just is. Hell, Mack is told that she is getting it placed in her record that she is gay since it is a Catholic high school (that fact is not revealed until after the scene where Mack is harassed by her principal I believe which made the scene just confusing). So there is institutional homophobia that is not addressed until the very end, but in a teen romcom ending (to be fair, the ending had my favorite part. The teacher's response to the scene at prom is just great). 

If Mack was not interchangeable with every single whiny cis boy from YA that makes his own messes, then this book might have been more fun. The only reason this book was gay was there were girls kissing and even one of the pairs of girls kissing was doing to to counter act "the gay". So homophobic gay kissing? I just don't understand. 

I wanted to like this book.

This is a YA book written in first person that follows Mack and her journey in her final year of high school where she becomes popular around some cheerleaders and has the opportunity to find love.

This was a quick, sometimes sweet, sometimes boring read. While enjoyable at times I did find myself flipping the pages and quickly scanning instead of actually reading. While I actually enjoy YA books, this one was a bit too superficial for me.

However, if you are looking for a quick YA reading with a happy ending and a few surreal things you would enjoy this book.

This ARC was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Love the idea of the book, but the execution was weak. I wish both Beth and Lila were treated with more respect by Mack, and I was baffled at how quickly they forgave her for her disrespect. Most of the interactions felt cringey and unrealistic.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the advance copy of a book that feels like it should be part of something bigger.
Mack is gay and has a serious crush on her school’s head cheerleader, Veronica. After she writes a note outlining her crush, Mack has to suffer the indignity of being outed by the boyfriend of her crush. This alone is bad enough, but the reaction of students in her Catholic school is terrible.
Not one adult steps up and tries to deal with the homophobic behaviour that is very much in evidence. Mack doesn’t give in to this awful behaviour - but she does vow to get her revenge by making it her mission to kiss all the cheerleaders. There's no rhyme nor reason to this, but it suits the story arc so we go with it.
To cut a long story short, Mack suddenly finds herself very popular. From never having been kissed to getting a range of girls keen to experiment. This goes to her head a little so it’s no surprise when she falls for further attempts to shame her.
However, this time round there’s a little more support for Mack and she has a girlfriend to help her through this.
Queer leaders was a very short story and it really felt as if it should form part of a bigger picture. It was all a little bit too much like a wish-fulfilment exercise and I felt there was a distinct lack of background detail to help us engage with Mack and her experiences.

This is a short and sweet high school rom-com about a girl who is outed by a jerk football player, and she makes a bet with him about on how many cheerleaders she can kiss. This is on the basis that Mack (our earnest to a fault gay mess) has a very hard crush on the head cheerleader, Veronica and her little love letters made their way to Veronica's boyfriend. Mack spends the rest of the story getting closer to the quirky Beth, bickering with best friend, Lila, and kissing some cheerleaders.

I liked the premise of the book initially, because it sounded like the cheerleaders in question were somewhat interested in Mack and she has to navigate being suddenly the center of attention and a potential romantic interest. But it turned out that Mack was just a little skeevy (if unintentionally) and didn't stop until she realized she was hurting the people she cared about. It was interesting that one cheerleader was trying to kiss away the gay, using Mack, while others had different motivations. Veronica was a surprisingly deep person, and I was more interested in her than some of Mack's antics.

It is a pretty solid debut, and gives us a sneak peek into what the author can do with a full length novel or even a novella. I did knock off a star because I really didn't like the whole "I can get all the girls" bet, even if Mack had learned a couple of lessons on the way. It does hit on some really great notes, and I do hope that one of the other characters might get a book of their own, too.

Oh no, I hated this. I liked the idea of a cute rom-com where a teen lesbian tries to steal cheerleaders after being outed by football player, but yikes… this…was not cute or funny and just all around failed as a romcom in my opinion. The romance was predictable but isn’t actually pursed until last 15-20% of the book and in the process so many people are hurt. I was also really uncomfortable with the amount of lesbomisia and the bullying and harassment throughout the story. I wanted something cute and funny, and what I got was a great big ball of Disappointment.

Content warnings include: bullying, homophobia, repeated outing of queer characters against their will, cheating, toxic definition of queerness, religion, homophobic authority figure threatening queer teen, TONS of public humiliation and second hand embarrassment.


I actually DNFed this at 41%

I couldn't get passed the disgusting homophobia, the constant outing, the unsavoury remarks, etc. And the fact there was a "cleansing fund" set up for the students to cleanse themselves after being around Mack, the main character.

The "tropes" in this are so horribly outdated, and a lot of the focus is on how bad/disgusting/sinful being gay is.

I was expecting a nice lesbian/queer/wlw story where Mack gets a girlfriend on the cheerleading squad and is happy and gay and positive. Because far out, us gays need that FAR more than we need yet another story filled with rampant homophobia telling us how bad and gross we are.

0.5/5 stars. This was horrific to me.

This had the potential to be so cute, but ultimately only reminded me why I usually hate American High School romcoms: they are formulaic, perpetuate harmful stereotypes and revolve solely on second hand embarassment and putting the protagonist down.

Content warnings include: bullying, homophobia, repeated outing of queer characters against their will, cheating, toxic definition of queerness, religion, homophobic authority figure threatening queer teen, TONS of public humiliation and second hand embarassment.

It wasn’t all bad. There were some cute moments, and particularly towards the end there were some unexpected moments where instead of turning south like I thought they would, it went up in the best way instead.

Those moments sadly were outnumbered by the countless painfully foreseeable instances of humiliation, second hand embarassment and cringe that Mack, the protagonist, went through, facilitated through bullying, homophobia, jealousy drama, or mistakes by her own design. I didn’t mind the fact that I could see it all coming – I minded that they were so overdone and uncomfortable and painful to read.

I felt so bad for Mack most of the time. Her pain and what she goes through didn’t make this a very fun reading experience, even though it was written in a way that suggested it was supposed to be light-hearted.

I also found the blurb to be misleading – I got the impression she would actually befriend the cheerleaders or become part of their friend group, which she didn’t, though I guess that misunderstanding is on me.

Since the book was so short it was however no chore to read. The writing was perfectly fine, though I would have liked to see some scenes more in detail rather than rushed as they were.

There were also a few open ends or unexplained instances that stood out ot me.

Overall this didn’t live up to the potential I saw in it when I first came across it.

Unfortunately, I found this unreadably cringey, with outdated cliches that were painful to read. It felt like a bad teen movie in the form of a book, with little in the way of heart or soul. I was really excited for a queer story set in a high school, but this was a catastrophic letdown.

This is absolutely, one-hundred percent the queer teen book I wish I had when I was a teen. Mack and Lila are so fun and hilarious and you can feel how great their friendship is from the first page. When Mack attempts to woo all the girls on the cheerleading team, the book breaks into hilarious teen antics and I loved every second of it.

I highly recommend this sweet, funny book.

** I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

This was a super quick read that was fun. I enjoyed Mack and Lila's friendship and the entire ordeal of finding yourself in high school. The book drove home the honesty and truth that comes with realizing who you and being funny while doing it. There were cringy places, but honestly they were far and few between. If anything, I wish the book had been longer to truly dive into some of the topics that were brought to light. The idea that Beth needs to consult with her higher power or that Mack's school tried to suppress her sexuality. There were so many great moments that I wish they could have shined a little more. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants a fun read about being in high school and learning who you are.