I loved this book so much. It took me a little bit to read it as it has long chapters. But loved the charater building, the plot and the over all everything about it. I have already recommended it to all my friends and family and will be buying myself a copy very soon. its actuallty in my cart as i am typing this.

*3.5 stars
I liked this queer book, but...it's barely a book? It's so short that it's practically a novella (around 200 pages total), and while I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, there were just so many plots started in here that nothing really had the time to fully unravel. There's a plot with her confident best friend feeling unsure with the future of their friendship; a plot with her crushing on her best friend's cousin and the romance that comes with that; a plot with her best friend dating her cousin and her worrying about him breaking her cousin's heart; and finally a plot about searching for her birth family. It's a lot to fit into such a short space, and I think the book really could've benefited from more time because this felt like more of a snapshot in time than the full story. I do think the Oscar Wilde references were interesting and fun, but I would only pick this up if you're a big Wilde fan or a big fan of slice-of-life stories, especially queer ones.

Going into this book I had zero expectations. I thought the cover was cute, and the idea of a retelling of the Importance of Being Earnest intrigued me, but that was it. Right off the bat, this book is 100% a character study, it is not plot driven at all since there really isn’t much of a main plot. This book is a bunch of subplots strung together. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however I found it a bit boring. There wasn’t any conflict for the characters to over come, just new settings for the characters to say snarky one liners to each other. I liked the romance, it was very sweet, although it too was a bit bland as there was no conflict/obstacles for them to overcome. They just ended up together and that was that. Another other aspect I liked was the discussion of adoption trauma and Jane’s feelings around whether she wants to meet her bio family or not. Adoption trauma is a very real thing that tends to get swept under the rug, so it was nice to see it discussed so openly and so well in a YA book. The message of this book is learning to be true to yourself, and I think the author accomplishes that, but in a bland way. This book was like eating chicken without any seasoning except a pinch of salt. 3/5 stars.

It was boring. It was so boring, there was no conflict and none of the plot lines ever went anywhere. This book was short and there was truly no substance to the small amount of pages to be had. 2 Stars because the writing was ok, the content itself just put me to sleep.

*3.75*

Epically Earnest was a sort of retelling of Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest. I have not read that play so i don't know how it compares...

This was okay. I was distracted for a couple hours and that was good. The plot was a bit predictable and I felt like it could have gone a bit more in depth with the characters and the situations, but overall, this was enjoyable, I had a good time.
It was a very short read, I flew through it but I feel like it might have actually not been such a good thing overall. I think everything just went by too fast and I could have used a little more drama. This being said, I still enjoyed all storylines and the book as a whole. It's just not a book I think I'll be rereading, but I will look into whatever Molly Horan writes next.

My rating: 3/5 stars

This was the perfect beach read for me today. I read the majority of it in just 3 hours. Overall, it was a cute, adorable, one sitting kind of read. Not the sort of book I’ll be thinking about for weeks, but the kind of book that makes you loose 3 hours and then wonder how time passed so fast.

The romance was cute and sapphic, the best friend’s romance was also adorable. The friendship between Janey and Algie was PEAK Gen Z.

What this book lacked in plot it made up for in the writing style. The plot felt like it was building towards a main event that never happened. But the writing style transported me directly into Janey’s high school senior brain. Sometimes the ability of adult authors to channel teens scares me.

I would recommend this one for a beach read or when in need of a quick rescue from a reading slump.

This was a fairly cute queer book about finding yourself and growing up. I liked that this book had an already established out cast of characters. I also found some of the characters to be fairly charismatic.

Overall though, this book felt lacking. It could have gone deeper into the main plot which is Jane deciding to look for some of her biological family or deeper into her budding romance with Gwen. Instead, I felt I barely got any of their interactions and emotions. This was a fairly fast read but I felt it barely skimmed the surface of any meaningful plot.

“When I closed my eyes, I saw that stupid cartoon acorn getting bigger and bigger, ready to explode and rain down all sorts of relations on me. Uncles and second cousins and third cousins once removed.”

Molly Horan’s novel Epically Earnest winds together two love stories with the main character’s journey to reconnecting with her birth family. The protagonist is a New York high school senior named Jane who, while debating promposing to her long-time crush Gwen, is DNA tested by her best friend Algie and matched with biological relatives. To further complicate her identity struggles, Jane must also contend with her childhood internet fame, when her adoptive family found her abandoned in a designer bag left in a train station. While Jane struggles to balance her love life with the new opportunity to know her biological family, her best friend Algie grows closer to her cousin Cecil. The heart of this story is the search for identity and family, culminating in a much more LGBTQ+-validating happiness than Oscar Wilde’s story.

In my senior year of high school I read The Importance of Being Earnest for the first time, and while I wasn’t facing anything as emotionally turbulent as Jane’s struggle for familial balance, the coded queerness and social absurdity of Wilde’s comedy resonated with me in a way that few classics had previously. While Molly Horan’s book is only loosely inspired by Oscar Wilde’s play, for me it perfectly encapsulates the deep honesty and wild irrationality of The Importance of Being Earnest. The backdrop of senior year– with the standard realization of impending adulthood– is made to feel much more relatable and beautiful as Jane remains strong while learning who she is and what defines family, while facing the truly scary task of asking a girl to prom. The distinct lack of homophobia was a much needed break for me as a queer reader, and as we move towards the end of pride month I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone looking for an authentic and thoughtful exploration of identity that centralizes two queer relationships.

(Pine Reads Review would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for sending us an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

This was a cute book, not my favorite though. It wasn't the kind of re-interpretation of "the importance of being earnest" that I expected, it came across as a very literal retelling, which made it a bit boring for me. It was cute though, and I appreciate the queer aspect of this retelling.

I don't expect retellings to follow their source material perfectly, but truly the only thing connecting Epically Earnest to The Importance of Being Earnest is the character's names and the fact that Janey and Algie date each other's cousins. The book was boring, awkward, and predictable. Janey and Gwen had little to no chemistry, their relationship came out of nowhere, and the whole thing felt unfinished.

One of my biggest concerns about the book was Algie. He was consistently so selfish and such a terrible friend. He violated every single boundary that Janey put up and then did nothing to make up for it. I also hated Algie's characterization as a predatory queer man and everything about his relationship with Cecil. Janey is practically begging her friend to not pursue her cousin because he is only 15, and Algie brushes her off and jokes about it. There is also a lot of discussion of how "innocent" Cecil is, which is incredibly creepy.

2.75 Stars. I hate to say this but this felt unfinished. It’s not because it was short and almost more novella length then the book length I expected, but because there did not seem to be enough plot. I’m sure I’m not the right target audience for this book. I just celebrated my 40th birthday this weekend -actually you don’t celebrate turning 40, it’s more like you just start the slide into a mid-life crisis- but even at this age I love YA and have read and reviewed more of it than any other category of books this year. I thought the cover was cute, and that the blurb sounded fun and overall I was looking forward to this read. Unfortunately, the book was not what I was expecting and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.

This book started off with a few interesting storylines surrounding the main character Jane. Unfortunately, everything that happened either occurred very easily, or just never really went anywhere. One of the main components you need to drive a story is conflict and this book never really had any. At times it looked like it may have some type of conflict, but then nothing would materialize. For instance, Jane had a crush on the girl of her dreams but the problem was her crushes’ parents were rich and would only let her date in the upper crusty old money pedigree category. How is this resolved since Jane is not old money? I don’t know, the whole issue just disappears never to be mentioned again.

On the good side, the fast moving romance was pretty cute. Those parts of the book were the highlight for me but I have to be honest that there was nothing in the romance that I have not read in hundreds of other YA books. There was no real angst or anything emotionally gripping, just a few cute scenes and that was it.

TLDR: I hate to say this but I just can’t recommend this one. There are so many good queer YA books out there that we can afford to be picker now than even just five years ago. There were a few storylines that started but the book never really went anywhere and that made it feel unfinished. Any kind of added conflict would have really helped and while the characters were okay and the romance was okay -and had a few cute moments- it just wasn’t enough to save the book in my opinion.

An ARC was kindly given to me for an honest review.

I thought this was an adorable, feel good, quick read. I love The Importance of Being Earnest as well, so all the connections to it were very enjoyable.

I wished that this book was a bit longer. It felt like some of the story lines could have been pushed a bit more. There was also not a huge conflict in the story, which was a nice change of pace compared to the books I normally read, but also as a result, it didn't draw me in as much.

But overall, I loved the characters and the entire book just made me smile.

Thank you to Clarion Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

This was a lovely coming of age novel; however, it lacked any real plot. While I'm all for coming of age novels that don't involve outrageous plot lines, I felt that there wasn't much going on in this book. It really just followed a snapshot of the main character's life without any of a traditional plot structure. I'm not sure I could point out what the climax was supposed to be as the novel just moved along at the same continuous pace.

Inspired by the Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Janey balances the emotional events of pursuing a relationship with her years-long crush & debating whether or not to search for her bio family, alongside costars Algie, Gwen, & Cecil.

If you're looking for an all-consuming, fun, mostly light queer romance, this book is for you. The story is fast-paced and easily engaging, and you don't need to have any knowledge of Oscar Wilde's works in order to enjoy it (I'm sure it's better if you've read The Importance of Being Earnest, but it's not necessary).

Each character has their own distinct personality and it's a lot of fun to see them play off each other. They create lots of relateable moments especially regarding anxiety. I also really appreciated the discussion they had surrounding the phrase "more than friends" and how it "undervalues platonic friendship" because as an aroace person, platonic relationships are everything to me, and society is so conditioned to overlook them in favor of possible romance.

There are also lots of literary references for bookworms to catch throughout the book, including classics like Pride & Prejudice, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, Romeo & Juliet, Les Mis, and more.

However, there were some not-so-great moments as well, which took away from the reading experience for me. The big 3 are, in order of appearance:

-The disregard for boundaries in the beginning, even though it sets the entire bio family arc

-Talking about how clothes can cover various things on people that don't "dim their attractiveness" but still "let all of us more average individuals have a moment of peace" and one of these things is patches of cellulite

-The HP reference, especially due to how offhanded it's mentioned and it could easily be replaced by changing ONE word

Due to these occurrences, I am only giving the book 3 stars. If the latter two are corrected in the finished copy, I would change it to 4.

Rep: bi, sapphic, achillean

CW: disregard for boundaries, graphic injury, blood, bone, spiders, fatphobia, HP reference

Rating system:
5 - absolutely love, little-to-no dislikes that did not impact my reading experience

4 - great book, minor dislikes that did have an impact on my reading experience

3 - good/decent book but for some reason did not hook me or there were some problematic things that just were not addressed or greatly impacted my reading experience

2 - is either a book I did not click with and did not enjoy, problematic aspects are not addressed and severely impacted my reading experience, or I DNF'd but think it has potential for others

1 - is very problematic, I would not recommend the book to anyone

I wanted to love this book, but I just couldn't do it. I ended up DNF'ing it about a quarter of the way through because it just wasn't holding my interest. I can see where the author was trying to go with it, but I think there was just too much going on for everything to work successfully.

I was really surprised by how much i liked Epically Earnest! I've been in such a bad reading slump lately that nothing seems to make me want to read, but I devoured this in a single sitting!

I loved how quirky it was, and that made it rather fun to read for me. But also I love a good LGBT Rom-Com, that is mostly lighthearted. With only a few moments of less lightheartedness when the MC deals with the effects of harassment and the abandonment of the her when she was a baby.

I'm not gonna deny that the whole book I felt like I was waiting for something bad or sad to happen and it didn't, though that isn't a bad thing. This book didn't need it and I think that might be why I liked it so much.

Keeping this review pretty short I really liked this and would definitely be interested in reading more by Molly Horan.

In this delightfully romantic LGBTQ+ comedy-of-errors inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, a high school senior works up the courage to ask her long-time crush to prom all while deciding if she should look for her bio family.

Jane Worthing’s claim to fame is that she was one first viral internet sensations, dubbed #bagbaby—discovered as a one-year-old in an oversized Gucci bag by her adopted father in a Poughkeepsie train station. Now in her senior year of high school, Janey is questioning whether she wants to look for her bio family due to a loving, but deeply misguided push from her best friend Algie, while also navigating an all-consuming crush on his cousin, the beautiful, way-out-of-her-league Gwen Fairfax.

And while Janey's never thought of herself as the earnest type, she needs to be honest with her parents, Algie, Gwen, but mostly herself if she wants to make her life truly epic. With a wink toward Oscar Wilde's beloved play, Epically Earnest explores the complexity of identity, the many forms family can take, and the importance of being… yourself.

What Worked: I enjoyed the way the author set up all of these new characters as queer and sometimes gender-swapped adaptations of the classic characters we already know and love. It was a creative premise for a young adult romantic comedy. It’s cool how each chapter starts with an Oscar Wilde quote. Somewhere in each chapter is one of Janey’s original obituaries about those who are still living, which is a creative touch.

What Didn’t: While the names are similar to Wilde’s characters and one was abandoned in a bag at a train station, that’s really where the comparison ends. There’s none of the mistaken identity hijinks that make the original story such a fun experience, and readers don’t even get a comedic reveal of how the baby ended up at the train station or who the bio-parents are. This novel also seems to be lacking much in the way of conflict. While it’s fun to see what the characters go through, they never really seem to struggle, which makes the novel feel like you’re just reading an ordinary day, which isn’t as fun as it could be.

Rating: Liked It

Definitely read Epically Earnest if you like:
• Stories of found family (Literally. We’re talking baby in a bag.)
• Retellings of classics that still feel entirely new
• Queer representation
• Young adult romantic comedies
• Oscar Wilde quotes
• Double dates that get out of control
• Reading obituaries (It’s really not as morbid as that makes it sound.)
• Book covers with The Breakfast Club vibes

The following review was posted yesterday on, Tuesday, June 21st, the day of publication. It will be shared on Twitter and Instagram tomorrow, 2 days after the publication date (Tuesday, June 21st), but the review has already been posted on Goodreads. The blog post includes links to pre-order the books and to its Goodreads page, so readers can add it to their to-be-read books.



“What did he say?” (…)
“He said, ‘End Act I.’” (…)
“And that means what exactly?”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure. A start? The promise of Act II? (…)”

Genre: Young Adult, LGBTQIA+
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Spicy Meter: 1 fire emoji
Content Warnings: Abandonment of a baby and harassment.

Inspired on “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde, “Epically Earnest” follows Jane Grady, a high school senior who found her fame when she was just a baby, as she was abandoned at a train station and found in a Gucci bag, becoming #bagbaby. In a coming-of-age story, Jane is stuck between trying to find her biological family or moving on with her life, as she crushes on a girl who’s out of her league.

I loved the quotes in the beginning of every chapter, I loved the relaxed narrative that didn’t try to be overzealous, but mostly I loved the characters Molly Horan portrayed. In this queer story, we get to see how complicated it can be to just be a teenager—finding young love, starting to make life-changing decision… “Epically Earnest” is a short, sweet read. Actually, too short if you ask me. That’s why I only gave it 3 stars. It’s really well written, but I felt like there was just so much unresolved or under-explained.

I would recommend “Epically Earnest” to anyone looking for a short, sapphic or queer romantic comedy that’s not only a romance book, but that goes a little more in-depth into character development and family relationships.

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

Or you could click here, and be redirected to Amazon, so you can order the book.

ARC provided by NetGalley and Clarion Books in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: June 21, 2022

"It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it."—Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

I was unsure about how The Importance of Being Ernest would translate into a contemporary YA novel and was pleasantly surprised by Epically Ernest! Plenty of wit and pop culture references combined with found family vibes (literally. Janey was found by her father as a baby) to create a heartwarming book that made me smile inside and out.

"There’s just not a more concise way to tell my cousin who’s still waiting for his Mr. Darcy that Algie is more like Mr. Wickham." (Location 264)

Besides questions about whether to search for her biological family and ask out a friend she's been crushing on for years, Janey also struggles with wanting to support her best friend Algie (who she is trying really hard not to slut shame for his dating habits) in his pursuit of her cousin Cecil.

"Lots of people are a bad “blank” without that badness coloring the entirety of their person." (Location 290)

Her reflections about people being a bad "blank" not making them a bad person actually really hit me. I tend to judge myself and sometimes others too harshly and this simple statement was a perfect reminder.

My favorite parts were the quotes from Oscar Wilde at the beginning of each chapter and Janey's "living obituaries" written about the characters. Obituaries about people who are still alive may sound morbid, but in fact were incredibly sincere and touching. I also enjoyed that the book was about LGBT+ teens without focusing on them discovering their sexuality and coming out. Those are also great stories to read, but it's nice having a contemporary YA romance where the characters just happen to be queer.

One gripe I have is with the DNA setup (science teacher alert). In the first chapter, Janey's friend Algie admits to "stealing her spit" to send off in the hopes of finding her long-lost family. Unless something has changed in the last couple years, DNA testing companies require more spit than what could easily be "stolen." Why? It's not the saliva but cheek and other cells in the spit that contain the DNA. So that broke my immersion.

Otherwise, I highly recommend this to anyone wanting a quick, light, read that will make them laugh and warm their heart.

Thanks to NetGalley and Clarion Books for the eARC!

3.5 stars
Thank you Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

This was just so cute I really loved the characters and the relationships between them and how they were written so much. This was much more than just a queer love story and whilst ofc I loved that part of it I really did enjoy the moments about family and adoption

Personally I found myself a little disinterested in times and the amount of times it would go way to hard for the pop culture kind of references but from that aside it was a really easy enjoyable read