I received an ARC from NetGalley as an educator.

Firstly, let me just say that I adore Oscar Wilde—his witticisms, his insights into the absurdities of social norms, and his willingness to exploit those for comedy's sake is what makes his writing so engaging. Taking the basic style of Wilde and applying it to the teenager of the 21st century makes perfect sense, and on that point, Epically Earnest does a great job. Molly Horan even uses quotations from Wilde himself to start each chapter, alluding to the unfolding comedy to come.

I can't deny that I enjoyed these characters—the utter campiness of Algernon (a name lifted straight from The Importance of Being Earnest), the tentativeness of Janey, the boldness of Gwen, and the adorable social awkwardness of Cecil. I loved that each of these characters were unequivocally queer and living their truth. Their high school drama (Does she like me? Who should I go with to prom?) cuts in nicely with Janey's more pressing and urgent questions (Who am I if I don't know who my biological relatives are?). I enjoyed watching Janey grapple with all of this, and her coterie of side characters made that journey enjoyable.

However, I don't know that anything especially exciting or epic, as the title would insinuate, really happened here. There wasn't a massive conflict, really, or any big revelations. It was hard to understand where a lot of the stress in these characters' privileged lives came from. Janey didn't even have any problem landing a true love, and I felt their relationship and all of the other romantic relationships lacked development and spark. The angst just didn't quite land.

In the end, this was cute and entertaining; I can think of many students who would enjoy this for the sheer appreciation of seeing queer teenagers doing normal teenager things and to that end, I would recommend it to several of my students on that merit alone.

This was the escapism balm to my heart I needed, Molly deserves huge credit for both the incorporation of key elements of Wilde's original story, and her choices to diverge from it in completely original ways, beyond the obvious gender-switched elements. There are no real villains in this piece, but there are plenty of emotional stakes to keep readers involved in whether Jane Worthington and her BFF Algie will be brave and steady enough to make ultimately satisfying choices in romance and beyond.

I got this arc from NetGalley and these opinions are my own. I finished this book in a day it was so endearing! Jane is a senior in high school and still trying to understand herself to some degree. She’s adopted and has a pretty public origin story, she’s been trying to decide for a while if she wants to find out about her bio family when her best friend Algie finds out for her! Now she knows she has some family out there she has to decided if she wants to meet them! She’s also navigating crushes and dating. She’s liked Gwen, Algie’s cousin, for ages, will she final be able to ask her out? There’s also her cousin Cecil, whose begun dating Algie, and while she loves Algie he’s not really one for relationships, can she keep her cousin from getting hurt? I loved the growth and development of not just Jane but Algie, Gwen, and Cecil as well. I also really enjoyed getting to read how Jane would view other people in a unique way! I think the way that Molly Horan chooses to portray that is really quite beautiful! I thoroughly enjoyed Epically Earnest and can’t wait to read it again! If you like LGBTQ+, coming of age, YA stories then you’ll love this one!

SO SWEET! the humour was great! a story with a pinch of oscar wilde blended with the subway baby story? where can you go wrong?

I got really excited when I first started reading this, thinking about all the ways that a The Importance of Being Earnest queer, genderbent, modern retelling could be amazing.

And this book really was great. It just wasn't great because of its inspiration. Honestly, apart from the names being taken from the original play, this just read to me like any other contemporary YA novel. Nobody pretends to be someone called Ernest in this, although all characters are epically earnest at some point or other. So it lives up to its title.

Janey is our viewpoint character. Her best friend Algie has just started dating her cousin Cecil. Janey's not honestly thrilled about this, because for all of his charm, Algie is very much a rich playboy. And she doesn't want her cousin's heart being broken by her best friend.

At the same time, Janey is epically enamoured with Algie's own cousin Gwen. The two of them have been watching a (fictional) queer sci-fi together and trading messages in that context, but Gwen's about to visit Algie and Janey's about to have a meltdown.

So of course Algie asks Gwen to be Janey's date for their prom.

All of this book is written with light hearted charm. It's very short and I felt like I just rushed through it. However, I loved the relationships between Janey and both her adoptive parents and the bio family that she ends up finding in the process of this book.

It's all very sweet and no gay characters come even close to dying.

Thank you so much, Clarion Books, for allowing me to read Epically Earnest early!

I took advantage of a free hour to do some reading and I can say that Epically Earnest was definitely time well-spent! I can't declare myself a Wilde scholar, but I've read his work before and I can unquestionably see how Horan was inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest in this splendidly humorous young adult novel, which nonetheless deals with serious issues such as identity and family. The latter in particular had a great impact on me. I would certainly say this book deserves to be in all libraries across the country, especially during the ongoing witch hunt for queer books and novels written by other marginalised communities.