I loved Luca and found this to be very authentic and likeable. It had some love scenes, but nothing that crossed the line. I loved the secondary characters and found them to be very three dimensional, especially Amina. Only reasons I didn’t give it a 5: I thought the Australian terminology might turn some students off & it may not book talk well. However, I think anyone who picks it up will love it.

Thank you NetGalley, Page Street Publishing and Page Street Kids, for the chance to read this book in exchange of an honest review.

TW: homomisia, islamophobia, grief, parental death (previous)

Luca Mason has everything planned. He's going to be accepted into the Australian Ballet School and leave his private high school behind to become a ballet star. But when he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his foot everything changes. His doctor tells him he will never be able to dance again, he loses his scholarship, he's forced to transfer to a public high school, leaving all his previous life, ballet and friends included, behind.
The only bright side in his new school is the friendship with the brilliant and nerdy Amina and his new crush, the apparently very straight school captain, Jordan Tanaka-Jones. While their bond become more and more stronger, Luca starts to ask himself who is he now, without ballet and what he will be.

Tobias Madden wrote a brilliant and deeply relatable story about a young man whose dreams are shattered and his heartbreak, rage and strength in moving on, in finding a new dream and path.
Luca's life rotated around ballet. His dreams, his friends, his scholarship and when a life-changing injury changes everything he's forced to upturn his whole life, reacting in a pretty relatable way. His pushes away his ballet friends, couldn't bear to listen to them talking about dancing and his old school and traditions, his own father, his old dreams to become a dancer. In a very realistic way for a teenager, Luca lashes out, he makes mistakes, he pushes people, loved ones, away, he obsesses over people who could hurt him, like his crush on a straight boy.
Luca's life is turned upside down and now he has to adjust to a new school, new friends, new possible heartbreaks, bullies, studying, exams and so much more and the way the author wrote about him is realistic, heartwrenching and so beautiful.
It was both moving and inspiring reading how Luca faces everything, every changes in his life with righteous anger and pain, but also finding the strength into making new friends and moving on, picking up the pieces, forging new paths, strengthening relationships, cutting abusive and cruel ones.

This book was really inspiring and strong, I loved the author's writing style and how, through Luca's voice, I was able to understand his suffering and determination, his curiosity and love. I loved his relationship with the witty and funny Amina, with Jordan and, later, with Grace too and his bond with his father was really well written and moving, I loved how they understand, support and love one other, realzing their mistakes, apologizing and moving on.
Definitely recommended it.

thank you @tbrbeyondtours & @tobias_madden for sending me an e-ARC of this!! I started dancing when i was 2 years old, so as soon as I saw this I knew i had to read it!!!
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This book focuses on a gay, male dancer who goes to a prestigious dance school. One day his life is changed forever when he suffers an injury that completely ends his dancing career. He not only loses the thing he loves most, but he is also kicked out of the school and loses all his friends. Starting over at a new high school is never easy, but he has to also deal with the number of homophobic students at his new school. He thinks his life is ruined forever until he meets a cute boy at his physical therapy office.
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This book was super cute & i really loved the relationships as well as the friendships that were told throughout it. I find that a lot of YA romances focuses so much on the relationship that it doesn’t build on the friendships but i thought this was excellently done!

I read this book as part of the blog tour hosted by TBR & Beyond Tours. Special thanks to Page Street Kids for providing an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 3.5 stars!

First of all, can we just take a moment to appreciate the beauty of this cover? I love the dancer captured in motion and it made it so easy to imagine Luca as the dancer on the cover and the colour combo is just is so eye-catching too. Stunning!

What I loved:
- The Australian setting. This is more of a personal preference/opinion because I don’t read a lot of books set in Australia but my nostalgia also kicked in because I used to live in Geelong and Melbourne, and when I was still in boarding school, my guardians lived in Ballarat so I’d visit them at the weekend a few times. I find it refreshing to read about a different location even though it's still a "Western" setting.
- The writing style was really personable and friendly, and it was almost like having a chat with your bestie which made this an incredibly easy and fast read—I flew through the pages and read it in a few hours!
- Luca wasn’t always the most likeable character but he was realistically flawed. I can’t imagine being a teen and having what you’ve worked for from a young age taken away from you because of a life-changing injury. He goes through the various stages of grief and while he doesn’t start his journey by coping in healthy ways, and he does continue to make mistakes along the way, I thought his was a realistic portrayal of a teenager who’s going through it. I thought his struggles as he tries to figure out who he is without dance was well depicted—figuring things out is messy, LIFE is messy, and there will be moments where the emotions will overwhelm you and that's okay. Just don't give up because things will get better. Luca did learn this the hard way at times but he does learn and he comes to appreciate it.
- Luca's dad was fantastic. His "dad banter" made me laugh quite a bit and I loved that his relationship with Luca was so open and friendly—although that's not to say that they didn't fight cos there were conflicts they had to overcome! But I'm glad he wasn't an absent parent and he was such a steady presence in Luca's life. I loved that he was emotionally vulnerable and able to admit to his mistakes, but he was also able to let Luca grieve and heal in his own way without being overbearing or pushy.
- I also loved the diversity of the characters, with the LI being half-Japanese and Luca’s new bestie at school being Indonesian. While I wouldn't say it was the *best* rep, it's still pretty rare to see Indonesian rep in any book and that made it all the more enjoyable for me especially because it didn’t feel “tokenistic” and it was realistic because there are a lot of Indonesians in Australia (and vice versa)! 😂
- It's been a while since I've read a contemporary YA book so I was surprised by how open this was with sex and I was glad to see it. To be clear, there is no sex but Madden doesn't downplay Luca's sexual attraction to Jordan or the way his body reacts whenever his crush is around and I mean, teens are learning about their bodies, exploring their sexuality and even having sex, so it was realistic to see it here.

What I was on the fence about:
- This was Luca’s story so it makes sense that his character was the most developed but the supporting characters felt a little cookie-cutter. At times some of the interactions also felt a little… insincere? For example, I appreciated how Luca tried to be a better friend by paying attention to Amina’s faith and religious practices, but it wouldn’t take more than one stray thought for him to ignore Amina and focus on his crush, and then that topic gets left behind.
- The romance... It wasn't bad but I wanted more show and less tell. Luca has an instant crush on Jordan, which is fair enough, but the whole progression of their romance/relationship felt quite sudden. Yes, they had a few bonding moments at OT but I didn’t feel like anything more than platonic curiosity (at least from Jordan’s side about Luca). It felt like one moment they were just two guys who’d exchanged a couple of words and emotional moments to suddenly flirting intensely and starting an ‘illicit affair’ behind closed doors. They also spend a lot of the book apart and while Luca recaps their interactions and moments of getting to know each other via text message, I wish we could've seen more of it happening in real-time.

Overall, I'm glad that I read this and I thought it was a great coming-of-age story! I loved the way the characters and their high school experience felt so real, plus, Luca was an easy protagonist to empathise with and I'm glad we got to follow along on his healing journey.

Oh my god this book sucked. Big time.

I picked this book, since honestly, I haven't read a lot of books with gay rep. This book was also set in Australia, and I haven't read a lot of books set there either. It sounded like a novel of recovery, with a romance in the side, and I was like, hey, this might be good. Was it? No.

Reasons I loathed the novel:

Reason number 1: Honestly, I hated Luca. Loathed him. Which is probably reason number 1 for the low rating. He apparently became obsessed with Jordan the first time I saw him, which is a big NO. Then, he abandons his friends, just because they could dance and he couldn't? I get everything about being injured, needing space etc. etc., but like dude come on, they just want to help you. I get being unhappy and frustrated and angry, but that doesn't mean you snap at everyone around you even weeks after the accident's happened

Reason number 2: First Luca's entire life was ballet and then it was Jordan and a little Amina? Like there was a literal sentence in the book, where Amina and Luca were talking about universities and he literally thinks to himself- I am not interested in anything... except Jordan. And I was like what the major heck dude, does your entire life seriously revolve around a guy? I mean, it was just too much!

Reason number 3: The author went out of the way to show that Luca was gay. Like out-of-the-way. There was this bus chase scene, and there too, Luca checks out the driver despite the fact that he's into Jordan? Like bro, what? What's more, he's already in a hurry, yet he is like oh no, wait, I must check out the driver

Reason number 4: The number of times Jordan's butt was mentioned. If I ever hear another word about it, I will kill myself.

Reason number 5: Luca's relationship with his old friends. Apparently, they had been friends for a long time, and he never ever saw their flaws but suddenly everything's put into perspective, and he breaks the friendship like it meant nothing to him. What's more, there was one scene to show that they were bitches, and nothing else- absolutely nothing else to incriminate them- no backdrop nothing

Reason number 6: Jordan's personality? Oh wait, he was supposed to have one? Riiiight, I forgot about it.

Reason number 7: Amina suddenly being all okay with Luca and Jordan's relationship, despite apparently having been in love with him since primary school. Like, Amina, you go girl, but that was unrealistic.

The plot wasn't bad, but the characters and writing style were like in the negative of the number line, so for me this book was incredibly bad.

This book is a really special book. It touches on so many different subjects but with care and attention.

It deals with mental health, loss but not of a parent but of capacity, which is a topic that's too rare, especially in Young Adult literature. It also offers the readers a beautiful love story, with its ups and downs, its good and bad times.

It also shows in a very honest way how friendships work and how to say stop and put up boundaries when said friendships become toxic.

The characters are interesting and lively, I've loved them all immediately.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

5 stars

This is such a great debut, and while it's a solid dance novel, it's also SO much more!

The m.c., Luca, is 16 and a rising star ballet star at his performing arts high school when readers meet him. He's a favorite for potential acceptance into a company, and by all accounts, he has a promising career in dance lined up for his entire future (so, like, 30 in dance years). This is why it is particularly shocking that this all falls away early in the novel...pun intended. Fortunately, Luca has an incredibly supportive father (a widower) who is there to boost him when he begins to make realizations about how different his future may be from what he expected. Luca also has to grapple with other related changes in environment, people, and ability, and these all shift his circumstances and mentality dramatically. What he encounters would be a lot for anyone, and any person with a soul will ache for him even more because of how much loss and change he experiences at such a young age.

On the upside, one stable part of Luca's identity is his awareness and acceptance of his sexuality. I LOVE this part of the novel. This character has a supportive family but through changes in environment, he is able to reflect when and where he is accepted. Though other characters do explore their struggles with this part of their identity, Luca never does. He is not a victim, and he is not figuring out this part of himself; he knows. Of course, novels that include the finding yourself/understanding your sexuality/coming of age component are an essential part of the YA world, but it was utterly refreshing to read a kid who is messed up and questioning everything about himself EXCEPT for his sexuality. One reason I know I'll be recommending this one to students for a long time is because of this feature and how dramatically it differs from so many similar books for this audience.

Through this novel, readers get to see a flawed but likeable main character who is struggling with an incredible obstacle. In the process, he explores his friendships, his priorities, his romantic options, and his family connections, and this all happens with the added - but not constant stereotyping - of the dance school background.

Readers who are able to access the audio version of this text absolutely should. For me, the fabulous narrator added even more texture to Luca and his journey.

I'll be looking for more from Madden and excitedly recommending this one to my students in the meantime.

What if you had this whole plan about what you want to do after school? How you want your life to look? What you want to do and who you want to be?
Luca has a plan. Until his plan goes up in smoke.

And GOD but I felt every single step of this. During my studies, I also had a medical issue that kept me from pursuing my plan. My dream, if you will. Just like it hinders Luca from becoming a professional Ballet Dancer. And let me tell you, that is one devastating feeling. I can't imagine what I would have done at Luca's age.

Because there's anger (so much anger) and resentment and not wanting to be with people but not wanting to be alone and you realize that you're being difficult and that everyone around you is insanely annoyed at that point but you just can't help it. Because you just feel lost and you feel desperate and you feel numb.

Tobias Madden made me feel like in those few weeks after I was released from the Hospital with my diagnosis. Luca's voice thought and said exactly what I was feeling and still am feeling at times. This story was as hard to read as it was beautiful, just because it hurts. But!! Madden gave Luca the happy ending that he deserves. He turned the narrative and said: What if you get a new plan? What if you can reinvent yourself into something you hadn't thought about being but which fits you so well? What if your life will look different now but different doesn't mean worse.

I didn't realize how much I needed this book in my life and I am more than thankful that it exists. And I will be absolutely over the moon once I get my hands on a physical copy.

his is the swoon-worthy summer romance I had been waiting for!

Set against the backdrop of regional Victoria (so close to home I could almost taste it). This was the quintessential Australian coming of age story that a whole generation of kids that don't quite fit in and who aren't afraid to stand out need.

Luca loses everything he holds dear with one misplaced step; his very promising dance career, his ballet friends, his scholarship, and a school where he felt safe to be out.

Now Luca needs to start over and find who he is without ballet while he does it. Add in a secret relationship with a closeted popular boy and confronting some of the toxic friends of his past.

This book managed to be hilarious and heartwarming.

I wish we got to spend more time with Luca before his fall so we could also be invested in his ballet career and experience more fully the devastation he felt, but besides that this book was a fun, easy to read time.

This book is out now is Australia and will be released on the 29th of March in America.

Thank you @netgalley and @pagestreetkids for the ARC!

i was so excited to read this book because i’m a dancer and i love reading books about dancers and this didn’t disappoint. i could relate to the grief that comes with not being able to dance and i really liked the aspect that he wasn’t injured while dancing, but rather doing something random. i thought that was really funny. i also loved the main character

When ballet is your everything, it only takes one misplaced step to tear it all away.

Luca's entire life in centred around leaps, jumps, and twirls. He spends his days learning new dance steps, or else attending the elite private school his father can only afford thanks to a generous ballet scholarship. Soon, Luca will leave Ballarat and achieve his dream of being accepted at the Australian Ballet School. But then Luca falls and shatters his leg. And all of his dreams fall to pieces.

In the wake a life-changing fall and a major surgery to repair the his foot to nowhere near its former state, Luca must accept that his careful plans have been permanently altered. The doctors say he will never dance again, and his elite school refuses to renew his scholarship when his academic grades are slipping. Luca begins to lose his friends as he struggles to hear them talk about their ballet dancer lives, and he has to start attending a local public school. Everything seems lost for good.

Luckily for Luca, things aren't always as grim as they seem. Changing schools is a chance to start over. Soon, Luca meets Amina, who takes him under her wing, and Jordan, who he might just fall in love with. Luca's future is different now, but hope remains on the horizon.

Anything But Fine is for fans of ballet contemporary YA like The Other Side of Perfect.

This book is terrific. Luca, a high school student, is focused on one thing above all else -- achieving his life's dream of being accepted into the Australian Ballet School and being on the path to a career as a professional ballet dancer. Everything seems on track, until he takes on wrong step and severely breaks his foot. All of the sudden, ballet is no longer a possibility. To make matters worse, he loses his performing arts scholarship to his private school and must move to the local public schools, where he has no friends.

Luca is really down, hobbling on his injured foot and without his close friends from his former school. But he soon makes some unexpected friendships: Amina, a nerdy and very friendly student at his new school, and Jordan, the popular soccer and rowing star who may be interested in a relationship beyond just being friends. As Luca spends more time in his new school and with his new friends, he is forced to address what type of relationship he wants with the new people in his life and explore what his identity is without ballet.

This was a charming and heartfelt read. It addresses important themes, including about identity, grief, and first loves, in the context of an engaging story. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I'm looking forward to what comes next from this author.

Highly recommended!

Thank you so much, Pagestreet Publishing, for allowing me to read Anything But Fine early.

Even though this book is called Anything But Fine, in my opinion, the story is just fine. Passable. Okay. Nothing more, nothing less. I liked it but didn’t love it. I couldn’t read the Mobi file as it looked like a landscape-formatted PDF, and the text was incredibly tiny. Instead, I read the story on my phone. Not a huge success, to be honest, and this issue might have influenced my rating. That said, I would still recommend this story to my students because the premise and the writing might appeal to them.

This is a story about finding yourself.  Luca Mason's whole life revolves around ballet:  he spends much of his time outside of school practicing, his friends are all other ballet dancers, and he has a performing arts scholarship to a fancy private school based on his talent.  His goal is to be admitted to the Australian Ballet School, and he seems on the path to achieving his dream -- until he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his foot in a way that seems to shatter his dreams.

As a result of that one moment, Luca's whole life is turned upside down.  He loses his scholarship and is forced to leave his school and his friends and enroll in the local public school.  There, he develops an instant friendship one one of the nerdiest, and nicest, girls at his new school, Amina.  And after meeting in the lobby of their mutual rehab office, Luca also begins to develop a fledgling friendship with the popular, attractive, and seemingly straight soccer captain and rowing star, Jordan Tanaka-Jones.  Luca is not sure what to make of his relationship with Jordan. Sometimes Jordan ignores him, other times he seems eager to develop a deeper connection.  As Luca explores (obsesses?) over Jordan, and their relationship seems to take the central place in his life that ballet used to play, he is able to avoid processing the impact of his injury on his life.  But as things grow increasingly more complicated, Luca is soon forced to confront what he has tried to ignore -- what does his future hold and what role will dance, and Jordan, play in it?

I so enjoyed this book.  I read it in a single day.  Luca's story was quite compelling. 
Although sometimes painful, the author did a terrific job portraying Luca's often rocky journey from the life he had always imagined for himself to one where all of the key foundations he relied upon were gone and it was not clear what would take their place.  Luca's relationship with his father was rich and nuanced, as both struggled with how to relate to the other as they navigated Luca's physical and emotional challenges.  Most of all, Luca's relationship with Jordan was alternatively heartwarming and heartbreaking, as we see Jordan and Luca figure out what they mean to each other as they are both at important crossroads of their lives -- and not always handling it in the best way..

Very strongly recommended!

Our main character is Luca Mason who just before his chance to audition for the Australian Ballet School, thus fulfilling his life-long ambition, falls down the stairs and break his legs. His life is thrown into total upheaval: he loses his childhood dream, his scholarship, his friends, everything he sacrificed so much for. But he also gains new friends and then there's that cute guy in the waiting room of his physical therapist.

I immensely enjoyed reading <i>Anything But Fine</i>. We could truly feel Luca's despair, his anxiety, his inability to let go of his old life, while knowing he had to build a new one. No YA book is complete without a group of mean girls, some of whom turn out to be nice girls, new friends and new romances and this one had all. It was fun and light-hearted while serious and thought-provoking when it had to be.

I want to thank NetGalley and Page Street Publishing for the ARC, you made me smile a lot.

This book really had me immediately at ballet, but actually reading it was a remarkable experience. I think what was most beautiful was the progression of Luca. His character growth wasn't linear and there were moments he'd take a step forward only to be knocked back three more. It was authentic and wondrous to see him go through such a life-changing event and still manage to find himself at the end, while still growing into someone else.

The other characters were great too. Jordan is absolutely adorable (even though I wanted to shake both him and Luca many times). Amina is a textbook amazing friend that I think deserves everything in the world. I'm also always happy to see good parents in YA books and Luca's dad didn't disappoint. I thought he was such a unique figure. I've also never read a father/son relationship quite as beautiful as Luca's and his dad's and it was such a nice surprise to see their relationship grow the way it did.

This book is character driven, so the plot is more focused around events. I often read character-driven novels and they get a little slow at times for my taste, but Anything But Fine avoids that. It's a fast-paced read that does a lot in its pages. I think I wish the last 25ish pages went a little too fast and it would've been nice to slow it down just a little and linger with Luca a bit longer after he resolved some of his challenges. I also DESPERATELY wanted another scene with Luca dancing, but these are minor complaints that are probably just me wanting to spend more time with these characters! Such a lovely read that has become a quick favorite!

I got a free copy through Netgalley, this in no way affected this review.

This was a very quick read and I really did enjoy a lot of parts in this book, but there were also a few things that were bothering me.

THE GOOD:
Amina: god, how I loved this character. She was a ray of sunshine, so sweet and such a good friend to Luca. I love how Amina was portrayed with her own struggles and she was a really well written side character.
The journey Luca goes on: I’m talking more about a mental journey here, but I loved seeing how Luca grew throughout the entire book, but I do wish the author would have taken some more time to really show us how Luca changed instead of having it happen in just a few pages.
The setting: I rarely read books set in Australia or written by Australian authors, so it was really fun to have this kind of change. And it taught me some new words, so yay for that!


THINGS I DISLIKED:
Luca: I didn’t strongly dislike him or something, but... he was a handful. He’s very self-centered and a shitty person from time to time. I really wanted to smack him over the head because of how he treated Amina as a disposable thing and then running right back to her when things got hard.
Jordan: now, this may be controversial, but I couldn’t care about him at all. One minute he’s acting this way and the next minute he’s turned an entire 180 degrees...
The ballet: or more specifically, the lack of being any mention of it. We have one chapter in the beginning and one at the near end, but there is barely any mention of it in the rest of the book. Luca has been a dancer for 13 years and is so devastated that he won’t be able to dance anymore, but there’s barely any mentioning of it in the rest of the book?

So yeah, it was fun reading this book, but some characters should have had some characteristic changes in my opinion.

I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life when I was a teenager (which is a sentence I can write now that I am TWENTY YEARS OLD?????). I tried a lot of things at school: politics, journalism, theater — and none of it had that spark that you hear about, that moment when you know, “Hey, this is what I want to do.”

It wasn’t until I was 16 that I learned about the field of linguistics, and it wasn’t until I was 18 that I started to pursue writing YA fiction. And now I’m doing both of those things (and I’m also writing these silly book reviews). I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a metaphorical rug pulled from under my feet.

But that’s exactly what happens to the protagonist of Tobias Madden’s book “Anything but Fine.” Luca is a ballet dancer and has been for much of his life, and he knows exactly what he wants to do: audition for the Australian Ballet School and become a professional dancer. And then he falls down a flight of stairs, injuring his foot, and suddenly, his dreams are dead.

So Luca loses his ballet scholarship at his private school and has to transfer to public school, and he pretty much immediately falls in love with Jordan, the most popular boy at school, who is certainly, definitely, a hundred percent heterosexual. At the same time, he befriends an absolute Wendy of a girl, who shows him the ropes at his new school. But this whole time, Luca’s wondering: who is he without dancing?

What an adorable book. It’s been a minute since I read a YA coming of age queer romance, and it’s nice to return to my comfort zone. (To be fair, I’ve read many books recently that fit two or three of those four categories. Just not all of them at once.)

“Anything but Fine” hits all the tropes I’ve grown to expect in this genre — some sort of life-altering event has the main character questioning their self-concept, and then they also fall in love, and everything is so overwhelming but also entirely normal. I love how Madden does it here, the way he encapsulates all of Luca’s huge emotions over seemingly mundane things, because that really is what it’s like to be a queer teen.

Jordan’s character is another example of a trope well done. I’ve seen the dubiously straight jock love interest plenty of times — Nick from “Heartstopper,” Bram from “Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda” and Jack from “Check, Please,” just to name a few — and it’s always a pleasure watching the main character slowly but surely realize that, oh my god, the love interest likes them back, can you believe it?

In short: all my love for this very fun, very Australian book. Now, please excuse me while I have a crisis over being 20 years old and still reading YA books.

“Anything but Fine” comes out on March 15, 2022. I received a copy from the publisher, Page Street Kids, in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely ADORED this book! From the first chapter I had a massive grin on my face and there were particular moments where I burst out laughing, which took me completely by surprise.

🧡 The representation is a true testament to the multicultural Australia I have been raised in and the various traditions and practices mentioned, are done in such an engaging yet informative manner. Madden shows us that whilst racism exists in a small portion, there is appreciation for the diversity of rich cultures that make up our communities.

🧡There is a broad range of themes that Madden explores including sexual identity, racism, bullying, social classism and metal health. I appreciate the way the book has been written where you are enjoying a moment or absorbed in an experience and suddenly you encouraged to consider varying points of view. There is the alternative perspective of an individual who is out and proud to someone who is grappling with understanding their sexual orientation and the fears and challenges this brings. Madden has delicately painted a picture of the reality of the ups and down of both scenarios.

🧡The heart of this book for me was the gorgeous MC, Luca. I connected with him immediately and felt like he was my best friend or little brother and there were so many moments where he is true to his emotions and I just wanted to give him a big hug. He’s funny, talented, kind, courageous and makes you believe that there is goodness in this world.

My heart is full after reading this stunning book and I am so incredibly proud of Tobias! It is author’s like Tobias and books like these that remind me that there is so much love in this world that we are worthy of and at the end of the day…love is love 🌈.

This is a cute book reminiscent of Heartstopper and The Passing Playbook. We follow Luca as he recovers from a career-ending injury and deals with transferring high schools and homophobes. Luca is a headstrong teenage boy and his behavior is true to that - he can be kind of a butt at times! But navigating high school is hard enough, without adding in making new friends and trying to suss out if the cute rowing captain is straight. For all of the trials that Luca goes through, I think that the tone of the book is warm-hearted and we get to see a supportive father-son relationship (something lacking in many LGBT+ books and reality). I'd recommend this for fans of dance lit and sweet romances!

*Thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours and NetGalley for the eARC*