This book is a great backstage-peak story that follows a massively popular boy band as its members realize that always doing what they're told and hiding their true selves doesn't have to be the only way to success.
At its center are Ruben Montez and Zach Knight, best friends who finally realize that what they feel for each other is more than just friendship but who are denied the chance to express it by their representation. Ruben is out and proud to anyone who is allowed to know but forced to hide that part of himself in order to be in the band. Zach is hit hard by the realization that he's bi and it makes for a very engaging read to see him work through his feelings and his coming out to those closest to him.
With them in the band are Jon, the son of their management company's CEO who is always forced against his will to be seen as sexual, and Angel, a wild child forced to act as an innocent. Gonzalez and Dietrich do a very convincing job of showing how overworked the four members of the band are and how little control they have over anything to do with their lives. The effects of such a life and mental strain are very realistically portrayed (at least I think they are) and really drive forward the pressure on all of them.
This is one of those rare books where you laugh, cry, and cheer with the characters because they feel life-like and you can relate to their situation even though there's nothing even remotely similar in your life. I enjoyed it immensely and will definitely add it to my recommend list.

Very happy thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the delightful read!

Really enjoyed this book. The romance between two characters was just enough but not too much, and I like the way the authors really fleshed out the other two members of the band. Everyone was very well-rounded, which made it enjoyable. I was worried it would fall into some of the same old tropes occasionally, but they were handled well.

Upset of the year but uh… this book was very mediocre to me. While the message was good (don’t settle, and don’t let anyone try to keep you from being exactly who you are), the story fell flat. I didn’t find myself caring for anyone, they all just felt kind of one dimensional. Zach was good, but his passiveness was so irritating (I know they acknowledged it but it still was almost too much), and the end felt too quick and tidy. Still cute, but it did not leave a lasting impression on me.

Next to my (5 star) rating on my "books read each month" list, I have written: SO GOOD!!! I feel like that accurately sums up my feelings about this book, because it truly was such an amazing book. The story follows members of a boy band and the issues they face. I don't want to spoil anything and there are many wonderful synopses online so I will leave it at that. I absolutely loved how this book dealt with more complicated issues such as substance abuse and homophobia in a realistic and sensitive way. Obviously I don't know what the lives of people in boy bands are like but I feel like this book seems pretty accurate. I read this book in one sitting because I just could not put it down, but it was one of my favorite books of the year. I think you would like this book if you enjoy romance, contemporary novels, and celebrities (particularly their lives), but I recommend this book to everyone! Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I had previously read novels by both Cale Dietrich and Sophie Gonzales, but I wasn't expecting to love this novel as much as I did. I read the entire thing in one night, and have read it twice since then. This book is everything I wanted it to be and more, the only disappointing thing was when it finished and I wanted to read more. It isn't necessarily a short, quick read, but if you're like me you will end up reading it in one sitting anyway.

This was such a good book. The unflinching look at how toxic the entertainment industry can be to artists, the exploration of figuring out you’re queer, Zach and Ruben coming together while fighting to be allowed to be who they are in the spotlight, all of it was amazing.

Sophie Gonzales is one of my autobuy authors and this was top notch. I really loved that with this dual writing team, the characters has very distinct voices. I never mixed them up while in their chapters. I loved all of the main cast and the way that their lives and problems were explored in the story.

Highly, highly recommend

This is an excellent book. It dives into the stories of a guy who knows he’s gay and another trying to figure himself out. It has a nice slow
burn with enough twist and turns to keep you captivated. It full of fun charters and amazing plot points. It really tells a story well without making the gay agenda the whole story line. Although it includes it enough to make it still part of the story line. It’s a great story that i would totally recommend!

As a boy band fan in my tweens, this is the story I never knew I needed. The ups and downs of Saturday's journey had me on the edge of my seat the entire time, needing to read just one more chapter page after page. Each of the boys were so likable and I couldn't help but root for them. I loved Zach's and Ruben's story from start to finish.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for the advanced copy for review. All opinions are my own.

CW: drug use/abuse, trauma, emotional abuse, closeting

I really enjoyed If This Gets Out. The romance between Zach and Ruben was perfect. Even though the story is mostly about those two main characters you are immersed in the lives of all of the band members.

I felt legitimate sadness for the band for everything they have to endure from their tour, band manager, and their label exec. It is written so well that you just feel for all of them and want to wrap them all in a hug.

Each character shows growth throughout the book. I absolutely loved that! If this were to continue with a couple more books about Angel and Jon, I would be super excited to see where their characters go.

I highly recommend this book if you love boy bands and love stories.

Thank you to St. Martin's and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ugh. I really wanted to love this. But so many things about it gave me the ick -- the biphobia, the drug plot, every adult being evil, 18-year-olds with no agency. I know it's more complicated than that, but it didn't work for me.

3 stars.

Eighteen-year-olds Ruben Montez and Zach Knight are two members of the boyband Saturday, one of the biggest acts in America. Along with their band mates Angel Phan and Jon Braxton, the four are teen heartthrobs in front of the cameras and best friends backstage. But privately, the pressure to stay in the closet has Ruben confiding in Zach.

On a whirlwind tour through Europe with an unrelenting schedule and minimal supervision, the two come to rely on each other more and more, and their already close friendship evolves into a romance. But when they decide they’re ready to tell their fans and live freely, Zach and Ruben realize they will never truly have the support they need.

How can they hold tight to each other when their whole world is coming apart?

A very, very happy pub day to this incredible book, IF THIS GETS OUT! Told in alternating POVs, this is a story that is all at once sweet and hopeful and romantic, unflinching and unrelenting, and not afraid to dig in deep: this is NOT just a tale of two boys finding themselves - and each other. Instead, it hits hard at the music industry, questions what celebrities really owe their fans (and how much ownership the fans and management have over celebrities), it challenges stigmas and doesn’t shy away from addiction and emotional abuse. There’s friendship and joy, heartache and drama galore.

Readers who are already doing their year-end lists might want to hold off until they read this one - trust me, it’s so worth it. Don’t let the page length scare you off (at over 400 pages it’s a bit longer than your average YA read), IF THIS GETS OUT is truly not one to miss and I’m so thrilled to have read it.

CW: coming out, closeting, parental abuse, excessive drinking, substance abuse, psychological abuse, car accident

I had heard so many great things about this one on Booktok and Bookstagram so I was so happy to get access to it on Netgalley. I really enjoyed so much about this book and how there are so many different pieces to it. I loved the boy band aspect to it, the coming out story, the romance, and the friendships throughout this book.

There was so much in this book to examine which made there just so much to love about this book. I really enjoyed the romance in this book but also how that romance was complicated by Saturday's management not allowing Ruben and Zach to be out. I thought that it was great to see what being out meant for both of them and how it meant different things for both of our characters. I also liked how management tried to make it seem that them coming out would affect the other band members and to have Angel and Jon disregard management's concerns.

Something else that I really enjoyed in this book was the push back that you get from each of these characters with their parents as well as their management team. I thought it was great to see how these characters developed through the story as they first try to please everyone but then they realize that to be happy they have to do what is important to them.

In this book you are introduced to our main characters, Ruben and Zach as well as the other two band members, Angel and Jon. You also get to meet each of their families as well as some of the people who are involved in the band.

I loved getting to know each of the four band members both as themselves but also when they were with each other. I loved the romance that occurred between Ruben and Zach and how supportive the whole band was of this. I also really liked how their friendship develops into this romance and how they each push each other respectively to be better for themselves. I like that Ruben has had time to be out and figure out who he is but Zach has just come to the realization that he is bisexual. I liked the way that Ruben wanted to protect him from what the reality of being out meant but he also wanted Zach to stand up for what he wants.

I loved Angel as a character and all that he added to this story. I thought it was great that we got to see him struggle with the image others wanted him to project of himself and the person he wanted to be. I thought the storyline of him turning to drugs and alcohol was done well and that resolves itself nicely as well. I thought it was great to show how his friends played into getting him the help he needed when management wasn't being very helpful. This story is told in a dual perspective through the eyes of Ruben and Zach. I liked that we got both of their perspectives as they each have different thoughts as the story takes place. I like that we got to see Zach not knowing how to navigate his queer identity and Ruben just wanting to be allowed to embrace his queer identity publically. I thought it was also great to get both perspectives as they each have different relationships with the other members of the band.

Absolutely love Zach and Ruben's relationship! Gave me all the feels. The two pov worked so well. Reading about bands is always fun for me so I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This was a pretty easy read and I liked reading about Zach and Ruben getting together but overall it was really predictable and I didn't feel as invested as I thought I would be.

I have a tendency to lean toward liking books about the music industry, so when I heard about If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich, I had to check it out. The book is a cute romance centered around the members of a boy band called Saturday. The four members met at a summer camp, got signed, and launched into boy band stardom.

But at least one member is suffering - Ruben Montez, who has been asking the management company to let him release the information that he is gay for years. They keep pushing him off. But things get very complicated when one drunken night in Europe, his bandmate, Zach Knight, kisses him. And what a kiss! Problem is, Zach has always thought of himself as straight, and is now wondering if his kissing Ruben (and liking it!) makes him bi or what.

In addition to having to manage being superstars under the control of their management company, Zach and Ruben now have a secret they're keeping from their best friends and bandmates Angel and Jon. As the relationship deepens, the complications rise and their management company still refuses to let them come out to their fans and the world.

I really loved the escalating plot of this story, told in alternating points of view from both Ruben and Zach. All four of the main characters felt very well-developed and real. This was a fun book and I hope Gonzales and Dietrich had as much fun writing it as I did reading it.

As a fan of 1D I was so excited to read this book! It more than delivered. The romance was amazing, and the writing was top-notch. I absolutely adore the characters and seeing their struggles and growth was really satisfying.

This boy band story and the slowly growing love between two of it's band members despite the pressure from fans, producer, family and friends around them is an awesome coming-out / coming-of-age story. Following the band through their tour through Europe is like sitting backstage at a BTS concert.

The push and pull between Ruben and Zach was so typical YA, I would highly recommend this book to young adults. "Older" folks may get a bit impatient by it.

Funny story, I actually had a brief Twitter conversation with the very lovely Sophie Gonzales about this book and how, while it is a romance, it isn't a rom-com, as many are expecting. I thought this misapprehension was due to a combination of the cartoon-y cover and the glowing blurbs that all accentuate how light and adorbs it is -- the kind of stuff you'd see in the marketing for a rom-com. And now I've read the book, and can confirm that while there are definitely humorous parts in the prose (mostly courtesy of Angel and Jon,) this book is definitely on the more serious side of YA romance.

Essentially, Ruben and Zach are members, with the afore-mentioned Angel and Jon, of the mega-selling boy band Saturday. Ruben has been told by Chorus Management, the company that basically runs Saturday's entire existence, to stay in the closet despite being openly gay for years. Since each of the boys in the band is meant to fit an appealing archetype, Ruben acquiesces, comfortably enough filling the Nice Guy role while wishing he had more chances to showcase his vocal abilities. The Nice Guy, ofc, doesn't get the starring roles, despite the stage-trained Ruben easily having the best vocal range of the group. Chorus assures him that this is all temporary but Ruben is starting to have his doubts.

Zach is the Bad Boy, tho in reality he's the quiet one with the dream of becoming a singer-songwriter in the vein of the pop punk bands he admires. Alas that Chorus prefers to go with more easily palatable pop music for Saturday's repertoire. But they do encourage him to keep writing, in hopes of eventually snagging some songwriting credits. Zach is also straight... he thinks. When he finds himself attracted to Ruben, he starts having to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about himself, as well as everything he thought he'd be able to put up with as the price of being part of Saturday.

As Ruben and Zach fall in love, the pressures to keep their relationship quiet and not rock the boat begin to get to them, even as the pressures of being in a boy band start to wear on all its members. With media rumors rife about (fake) feuds and (even faker) girlfriends, can the four guys who originally started Saturday out of friendship and a shared love of music find a way to hold on to their bond and their band without losing their integrity?

I really enjoyed the dual perspectives of this novel, with Ms Gonzales writing Ruben and Cale Dietrich writing Zach, both harmonizing beautifully to tell a messy but relatable story of imperfect people doing their best to nurture their love. There were absolutely times that I wanted to smack either Zach or Ruben -- I am begging everyone in the entire world to stop expecting their loved ones to be psychic -- but overall, I absolutely wanted their love to thrive. Ruben's mom was a very believable villain, as well, tho perhaps not in the ways you'd expect. I also really enjoyed the look into body image given here, as well as the strong relationships between all the boyband members (plus, Angel and Jon are HILARIOUS.)

Where this book didn't convince me was in the mechanics of the boyband itself. I feel like the choreography aspect it spends a large part of its time on became passe once the dance-agnostic One Direction took over the world. While girl bands and K-Pop bands of all genders are certainly still required to have great choreo, 1D and their successors in the West just... aren't. Saturday, in fact, feels very much like a late 20th century throwback instead of a modern group. Seriously, look up some of what the members of 90s boyband 5ive said when they heard about 1D's far more relaxed schedule than their own and tell me Saturday isn't more the former than the latter. And sure, I believe that management would try to keep band members closeted to enhance their appeal, but the band itself felt less realistic to me than, say, the guys of Fever Dream featured in Zan Romanoff's 2017 novel <a href="https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/09/11/grace-and-the-fever-by-zan-romanoff/">Grace And The Fever</a> which, while it had its faults, certainly felt far more rooted in recent history.

I feel like a killjoy for criticizing this book over that, and if you don't care about the <a href="https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2021/05/19/the-album-of-dr-moreau-by-daryl-gregory/">evolution</a> of modern boy bands, then you likely won't care enough to be bothered by what are essentially just decorative details. If This Gets Out is otherwise a smart, often funny, occasionally painful look at discovering yourself while in the public eye, perfect for fans of mlm romance.

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich was published December 7 2021 by Wednesday Books and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781250805805">Bookshop!</a>

Thank you so much Wednesday Books for the free access! I have waited for this book more than a year ago!
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CW: Homophobia, Internalized Biphobia, Parental Neglect, Drug Use, Car Accident, Underage Drinking, Racism, Mentions of the word “suicide” and implications similar to that nature
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If This Gets Out, to put it simply, follows two bandmates who are caught between love and career, freedom and constraint.
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But the book is not your typical fluff, sunshine, and rainbows, contrary to how the cover initially makes you perceive how the story will go, as the bandmates face the obstacles of figuring out one’s own sexuality, the possible consequences of coming out as public figures, defeating the prejudices and challenging authority within their management, and how they deal with all that at the same time without compromising the way to the life they want in the end.
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I enjoyed how the story has much depth and heart to it especially the beginning and the end. The relationships between the bandmates are also one of the most commendable with the way they are determined to care for each other especially in their very difficult state as a band and as humans in very controlling environments.
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But what I did not like, is that there were so many characters introduced in the beginning that I got so overwhelmed and confused. As much as I enjoyed a good part of the book, I think it also had too much fillers that could have been utilized more if they were used for the development of characters and relationships. In line with that, I was left a bit unsatisfied with how quickly the romance happened as I was longing for more moments of development along the way but that’s just personal preference as I gear more towards slow burn to really feel deeper for romances (unless I otherwise find them well done as fast paced).
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Not my most phenomenal read, but the book had its moments.
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Overall, this book is a no-brainer. Pick this up even if you’re merely interested in character-centric stories with the concept of bandmates having mutual feelings with discussions of complications of being in the closet and still getting the feel of one’s own identity.

Last night I lit a scented candle and cuddled up with a glass of red wine and this excellent book which I could not put down. If This Gets Out is a fantastic YA story about a superstar teenage boy band. The relationships between the four friends who met at music camp are authentic and touching as they navigate celebrity status, discovering identity and sexuality, and attempting to project individuality, much to the chagrin of their producers. I highly recommend this new release (it came out yesterday!) and I'm so thankful for the ARC from St Martin's Press and Wednesday Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Unfortunately, due to grad school finals, I was unable to read this title before the publication date. I look forward to reading it in the near future.