4.5 ⭐

If This Gets Out tells us the story of Ruben and Zach, members of the famous boyband Saturday, as they struggle with balancing their feelings for one another while appeasing their hard ass PR manager.

This story... Just wow. I don't even know what to say, honestly. It's emotional and phenomenal.... A must read

zacruben get behind my back imma defend and protect u. i think this relevantly portrays the powerplay and pressure within the entertainment industry.

i kept thinking about taylor swift and scooter braun, the problem in the kpop industry, and how artists are vulnerable at the start of their career where they are usually taken advantage by these terrifying capitalist monsters.

4.75 ☆

This coming of age book was perfection.
It is for the boy band lovers.
It is for teens growing up and finding themselves.
It is for young adults that have a great relationship with their parents and for the ones that have an unhealthy relationship.
It is for young adults that are struggling and needing support and love.
It is a book that focuses on young men, their life in the limelight and finding where they fit in the world and finding their voice.
It is a book that is all inclusive, but really celebrates and understands a young man that is in the midst of discovering himself and coming out. I couldn't have loved Zach and Ruben more!

Saturday is a boy band that was put together while 4 boys befriended one another during a summer camp. Angel, John, Zach and Ruben's lives would never be the same after John's father, who is a famous music manager, decides to take these boys under his wing and mold them into the next big thing.

If This Gets Out is all about this band, their families and how they live for their management and not themselves. They are pawns in the management game and they are there to make them money. This book really opened up a different side to the music industry. Especially for the "money making teen boy bands". We've all seen them and you now may think of them very differently. But this book really concentrates on two boys, Zach and Ruben, who tells their story from their POVs.

Ruben knows who he is and everyone from his family, to his friends, to their management team knows who he is. But they try to stifle him and don't want him to come out. Because he is gay in a boy band and they sell sex. They want the girls to love him. It's been a hard road for Ruben, but he knows his time to come out will be soon. Or so they keep telling him.
Then there is Zach. He's not even sure what is going on with himself. He keeps having these feelings for Ruben and thinking of other boys he has liked in the past. But he knows he likes girls. How can he like both? What is going on?

I enjoyed that the authors took a popular boy band and enlightened the audience to what it may be like to be a part of "the machine". But it's so much more than that when you involve finding ones sexuality, addiction, mental health, etc. The authors hit on so many relevant topics and did it in a very readable and enjoyable way. The characters they created along with the story and journey of those characters was such a beautiful and believable process. It broke my heart and made me love those boys more and more as the story progressed. The beginning took me a little to get into, but it was all about building this world and the boys. In the end, I fell in love with Zach and Ruben and the friendship they had with their bandmates and the relationship that they allowed to grow and develop between the both of them. I couldn't have asked for more.

4.5 stars rounded up for this wonderfully told story and journey to discovering oneself. Definitely a YA book I'd recommend to any reader, but especially to the LGBTQ community.

I saw people talking about this book for months and had some pretty high expectations for it, but I was truly blown away. I absolutely loved everything about this book. As a long-time fan of boy bands, I was immediately drawn to the characters and loved the dynamics between them. The plot was perfect and extremely entertaining without being overwhelming. While reading I could not put this book down and will be recommending it to everyone I know.

What a rollercoaster of a book! I finished this book in just over 24 hours which, as a busy college student, says a lot about this book. I fell in love with each member of Saturday. Even though Jon and Angel didn't have POV chapters, Zach and Ruben's love for them and dynamics with them made it feel like I knew that half of the band just as well as I knew the half of the band narrating the story. There is such an intense undercurrent of hope and joy within this book that it feels impossible not to love Saturday. 

This book is full of ups and downs and does not shy away from the hard topics. I was a little surprised at how dark this book gets for a RomCom, but the flow between light and dark worked really well. I never felt like I had been cheated out of the genre I was promised but rather like I was seeing into the realities of these characters' lives. Things alternate between light and heavy for everyone, and this book shows that the highs and lows are even more intense when your entire life is being scrutinized by cameras 24/7. Each of the characters has major struggles, and their struggles are painfully real and can be difficult to read. If you follow the authors on Twitter, you may have seen them tease about the "70% club" and the readers' reactions to a major event. The build-up to that event is done exquisitely, I was dreading finding out what exactly was about to happen because the tension was so thick that it feels inevitable that something is about to go down. I kept wondering what specific action was going to be the one to push the tension over the edge. It is an excruciating build-up and I loved every minute of it. I echo other readers by saying, once you hit that point, you will not want to stop.

Zach and Ruben were adorable together, even when things got hard or messy, even when things seemed bleak, their love for each other shone through, even before they both knew they loved the other and that their crush was requited. If you are looking for intense, long, drawn-out pining, this book probably is not for you, but if you are looking for some pining and then a deep, real look at relationships, self-discovery, and how they intersect, this book is definitely for you. They were so fiercely protective of each other in ways that made my heart melt. I am absolutely team Zuben for life.

Yes, this book can get heavy and dark, but the prevailing hope and joy even from within the darkness are why I think this is absolutely the kind of book we need in these times, and I am immensely grateful that Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich have provided it to us.

This is a story about the boy-band Saturday, what happens when two of its members fall in love with each other, and how the industry around them impacts not only their relationship but also the lives of all the young men in the band.

I enjoyed the main cast of characters a lot, they had very distinctive personalities, problems and great story arcs. All of them felt real and you couldn't help but root for their happiness.

This was an engaging pageturner. The Romance took center stage for the first half of the book while the plot of the second half focused mostly around the harms of the Music Industry. Overall this book had a lot of loveable moments, there were no boring or dragging parts, and I really was hooked in the last quater of the book wanting to know how things would turn out - yet the story itself missed a certain spark.

What I disliked most about this book where the parental characters and the amount of their involvement throughout the books. These boy-banders might all be just barely legal but the heavy involvements in the last act of the book with their childrens problems had the energy of parents at the PT-meeting complaing about the mean band teacher.

In addition I was left baffled by the managment team, who came off as mustache twirling villains who had no real plan. I understand why they might want to stop rumors about Zach and Rubens relationship, totally get that, but what baffled me was how previously they apparently had been very okay with Angel and Jon being shipped all over social media. The band was also just weeks away from the scandal of Zach and Ruben not getting along, why further this narrative and take extra steps so they won't even stand next to each other?

TW: overt homophobia, closeting, drug (ab)use, an accident involving a car

Thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I've read Sophie Gonzales's 2 previous books, and I haven't read anything else by Cale Dietrich yet. I'll definitely be looking into his work.

If This Gets Out follows Zach and Ruben in a dual-perspective book, chronicling their experience in Saturday, the biggest boy band in the world. The band (including 2 more band members, Jon and Angel) goes on a European tour, where exhaustion, drug use, and romance all ensue. While this book is long, it reads very quickly, and I think achieving that definitely takes some skill. Even though this book only has Zach and Ruben's perspectives, I do feel that all 4 boys really get a story throughout the book. The character work here is really nice, and this is just a fun ride to go on.

My one criticism here is that I think there isn't quite enough to establish Zach and Ruben's relationship. I would've liked a little more sweetness to show why Ruben especially fights so hard for it later. Obviously, young love is a hell of a drug, but a little more relationship building would've made this a perfect read.

Overall, I had a fun time with this one.

I really enjoyed this book! I found the characters lovable and so many will be able to relate to this story.

After having read some of Sophie Gonzales’ other books, like Perfect on Paper and Only Mostly Devastated, it felt like all my hopes and dreams were coming true when I saw she was coming out with a dual-perspective boy band romance co-authored with Cale Dietrich! My supersecret guilty pleasure/favorite trope ever is famous people falling in love (be it with an ordinary person or with another famous person). And, in this case, it’s made ten times better because it’s gay!

For the most part, I absolutely adored this book and the characters, especially Zach and Ruben. Zach’s story is incredibly relatable for anyone who has struggled with their sexuality, and it felt very authentic. But the side characters, too, felt fleshed out and layered, instead of one-dimensional. The dynamic between Angel and Jon and even the band as the whole was strong, and it was palpable how much they cared about each other. Truthfully, I wouldn’t have minded a little more insight into their backstory and how they became a band. That’s probably my main complaint about this book as a whole (if you can call it that), is that it only ever seemed to scratch the surface. You get some insight into Zach’s struggle with his sexuality and Ruben’s struggle with his mother, but beyond that, the tension in the novel got to be repetitive. Between the interviews and the conversations, some scenes seemed somewhat recycled.

Yet, that didn’t stop me from giving this book a 4-star rating because despite all of that, it was still a strong, well-paced, absorbing book that I didn’t want to put down (and can’t wait to read again). Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

"If This Gets Out" tells the story of Ruben and Zach, two members of the boyband "Saturday" as they struggle to reconcile their romantic feelings for one another while still being aggressively managed by a PR corporation with an iron fist.

First things first - I am aware of things like band fanfiction and "real life people shipping" like with what happened with, say, One Direction, but it isn't my thing, so I'm coming at this book pretty straight on with minimal fandom experience to compare it to. That said, I really enjoyed this book - it depicted the exhausting, exhilarating life on the road as a boyband pretty well, cutting through a lot of the glamor to the hard work and pressure that comes with the job. Both Zach and Ruben felt like real people with real personality flaws, and I really loved how their relationship unfurled. I also adored the dynamic of Saturday itself, with all four members being interesting people in their own right. The 'evil PR corporation' was a bit much, but sure, why not. I can see how their image must be protected above all else.

I'd compare this book to "Red, White, and Royal Blue" in terms of subject, although its tone is more melancholy and exploratory. Its pacing suffers a little at the beginning and end - too fast initially, too easily wrapped up at the end - but when I was in it, I was in it. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants a romance written charmingly, with a unique premise and a cast of loving characters.

I'll be featuring this book on my Bookstagram closer to its publication date. Thank you to the publisher and to #netgalley for this ARC!

My younger self is sobbing right now! This book was amazing! I love this trope but it is so hard to write without it coming off like a fanfic. (fanfics are amazing so that is absolutely no shade to you fic writers out there.) This book somehow managed to make it work. Maybe because the boys didn't resemble any current core bands or maybe it was just the fantastic writing style either way it worked. I felt like Saturday was a real band and I grew attached to each member. I especially loved Ruben.
I also loved the commentary on the music industry. Here in more recent years we are hearing more and more about how music labels push and mistreat artist in order to make better profits and I loved that it was addressed here. It was done well and it felt realistic.
The way Angel's problem with substance abuse was handled as well was beautifully done. The way the authors didn't make it into a joke or even his core personality trait just something he was suffering through felt so genuine.
I could go on for ages about this book if someone let me. This book actually made me sob and I can not wait to make everyone read it.

Okay, Saturday can step on me and I'll still cheer up while they perform.

This book hugged, punched, kissed, and made me believe in love for all colors.

I need a finished copy.

this was INCREDIBLE AAH. I just finished this book and I'm literally screaming. this was one of the best reading experiences I've ever had. if you are/were a fan of One Direction you're going to love this book. not just love, you're going to adore and worship it. or I did anyways oops. If This Gets Out follows boyband Saturday. they are a worldwide sensation. the thing is, they are extremely controlled by their management. they're basically not allowed to do or be anything without permission. when two of the members, Zach and Ruben start to get romantically involved, Chorus Management is obviously pushing back. coming out is not an option. If This Gets Out is an incredible story about self discovery, taking control over your own coming out and it's just really queer. aka my perfect book. watch me yell at everyone until they read this book because oh my god it is amazing and it deserves all the hype.

I can't believe I got to read this early! If This Gets Out is a book I wish my friends and I got to read when we were young teens, trying to figure out who Mr. X was and sending each other questionable 1D fics. This premise of two boy band members falling in love is perfect, and its done so well here. I was worried they main characters would read too much like Larry, but they didn't at all. Besides being a boy band with questionable management, I thought this band wasn't all that similar to One Direction at all. Still, I think this will be so empowering to their fans, and other fandoms as well. This book honors fandom from the band's perspective in a way that I thought was different than most books I've read about famous people. I was also struck by the complex coming out journey in this. I think despite it being about international superstars, its deeply relatable. I also liked the sex positivity, but it does make this a book I can't really recommend to most of middle schoolers. But I do think its important for teens to read these things and I'm glad it exists in this story. My only issue with this is small, and its that some parts felt extremely melodramatic, in a way that will work for the teens I recommend it too but not for myself, an adult. That's expected, but it did take me out. Overall, I'm so happy I got to read this and I can't wait until its out in the world!

This book had so much potential but it didn’t reach the bar for me. It felt forced and it was boring if I am being honest. It was work to finish the book.
I really did love the premise, it just didn’t live up to it.

This was such a fun read. I loved the evolution of the band and the relationship between Reuben and Zach. Sweet moments between them and I loved the drama and support with their families. Hope that there’s more to come!

This was such a fun book!! Loved all the characters and how they each got their moment. The chemistry between the guys were great!! Fun read!

NOT ME SCREAMING AFTER FINISHING THIS BOOK!!!! Okay, we all have been rooting for the boyband romance but it's so much more than that, so much more. Forced to stay in the closed, forced to hide your identity since millions of people are watching you, it kills you to not be able to say what you are, even though you want to scream it to the whole world. I loved loved loved this story. Except for the company being so annoying, I love how it portrayed the solid bond between the members, the four who are always together, Zach, Jon, Angel, and Ruben. An adorable story that is not just sweet romance but also an emphasis on how society, peers force people to stay in the closet even though they're meant to sore the world free from that cage.

If This Gets Out is a fictional take on the very real abuse of power of the music industry. In this time of boy band revival and k-pop stans, this book tells a story about the fictional band Saturday and the cost of what it means to have your whole life wrapped in a contract. The story centers around two members Rueben and Zach, who have been made to keep their relationship secret by their controlling label. This book does a wonderful job of showing the music industries toxic behavior. It touches on homophobia, racism, drug addiction, forced sexual appeal, and creative freedom.

I think this book is coming out at an opportune time as well. With k-pop band members almost dying of exhaustion, bands like One Direction and Panic! At The Disco were being fetishized and shipped against their will, and the Free Britney trials, this is a harsh but honest look into the reality of how young stars are shaped by music labels.

The story is well balanced, the characters have growth and changes that are authentic and heartwarming, and the romance is cute albeit a little cliché. I think this will be a great read for all ages, but also, a good learning opportunity for teen readers to gain insight in what might be happening with their favorite bands and learn to speak out to make change.

Rating: 3,5 / 5

I guess I'm not a huge fan of the music industry, I thought once I start reading this book I will find out something interesting. To be fair I was expecting that the main storyline would be close to the romance, like in Aristotle and Dante exploring Universe.

However we are dipping in to the Music industry issues, "child/teen slavery" when adults force their ideas on who they have to be and what they have to do. I liked how authors showed this sector to us, how pretty boys ( who were loved by so many girls) actually became victims.

Good book for our day society full of idols and their fans.