The ending genuinely hurt me, and while it wasn’t what I would have chosen I do think many people would absolutely love the book. It was such an interesting concept, I almost feel like a another book could be made from Cal’s point of view or a sequel

Thank you NetGalley for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 🥰🫶
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Okay, Cupid is such a fun, messy, t4t, queer, YA romance and I loved it with my whole heart! This book made me laugh, it made me feel, and it made me theorize! All the things a good book should make you feel. I really love our MC Jude, our resident hopeless romantic cupid who recently got in trouble for falling in love with a human. Who spoiler alert falls in love again which leads to them questioning their life as a Cupid. I also loved all the side characters and Jude’s friendship with all of them. I’ve seen some discourse over the ending, but I loved it. I think it’s open and leaves us to imagine what could happen next in the perfect way. 💕
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Okay, Cupid made me realize my ideal book is a YA queer contemporary romance with some added magic! So, not a full fantasy but reality with just a bit extra. 😊 Reading this made me think “Huh, maybe there are cupids out there making people fall in love”.
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This beautiful book is out right now, so if you're interested, I suggest you read it! I’m hoping to reread it soon so I can listen to the audiobook. 😌
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🌈Rep: queer nonbinary MC, trans masc Vietnamese LI, queer Vietnamese SC, queer black SC.

I only kept reading this because I was listening to it while painting and changing it would have been a hassle, and I was mildly curious how it would end up. Unfortunately, like the rest of the book, the ending fell flat for me. I kept waiting to feel something like I have in Mason Deaver's previous books, but everything about this book felt blah.

The concept of Jude being a cupid is really cool and interesting, but it wasn't really explored like I hoped it would be. He mostly just feels and acts like a regular teenager. It's like the whole cupid angle is there only as an obstacle for Jude to fall in love with a human and only brought up when it's convenient to the plot.

I also didn't really understand the ending. It didn't give me any closure and instead just left me confused over what had happened.

None of the characters were terribly likeable and I wasn't really interested in finding out more about any of them. They were just... there.

*Thanks to NetGalley, Scholastic, and PUSH for providing an early copy for review.

This book was beautifully written, I just found it hard to connect with the characters. I loved the idea of the cupids, but in practice found them quite frustrating. It's a shame because the plot is pretty good!

Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy

Thanks so much to PUSH and Netgalley for giving me an ARC of this book! I love love LOVE Mason Deaver and will read anything they write hand to god. I like that Huy and Jude got their own version of a happy ending, it was bittersweet in a good way. It felt similar to the end of The Sun Is Also A Star, Natasha and Daniel meet again and are given a chance to start over. But being Cupid honestly sounded like hell! The way they kept assuring Jude that Cupids were meant to be "superior to humans" made it sound super condescending (cough cough Cal). Also who in fresh hell was giving the Cupids their assignments? How many of the couples actually remain together? Why are the Cupids so okay with child abandonment? I have so many questions and I'm really asking them like I'm going to get answers. I award this book a 4.7 out of 5 for its creativity, great leads, and a fun magical realism romp that I will always look back upon fondly.

Ooo that ending broke my heart a little. I loved this book. I do hate that cupids never get called out for their weird hatred of humans.

Awww I absolutely loved the idea of this! A Cupid, made to make humans fall in love, falling in love with a human boy.
But Cupids are not made to love humans and if you kiss one, there are serious consequences.

I’ve never read a t4t YA book and I love that there is one and it was so cute! I loved the way trans body’s were described in this and how confident Huy was in his body.
There was soooo much yearning and misunderstandings because of stupid assumptions, it was a mess. And I loved every minute of it. I love a good yearning, a slowburn romance and a messy YA romance. Teenagers are so dramatic, but it’s simply realistic!
I also found it kind of refreshing, but also unexpected to have zero discussions about sexuality in this. It’s never assumed that any of these characters are straight, but it’s also never talked about what labels they identify as. They’re just all assumed to maybe be in love, when it’s not known if they’re queer at all. Very interesting when queer isn’t considered the norm, but still very unexpected in a YA book!

For me the ending was a little rushed and awkward, because somehow after Jude worked weeks to make Alice and Huy fall in love they’re not concerned about Alice or her feelings at all in the end? And at the very end we know very little of what is actually happening.
I think the world of the Cupids, their lifestyle and rules would have needed to be a little more fleshed out to make the whole thing more understandable and add up. We know very little about Leah, Richard and the other Cupids, their relationship or world. What actually happens after a second kiss? What arête options for a future?
For me the possibility for Jude to find love in their world made the whole book make a little less sense for me.
Also a Cupid not realising when someone has feelings for another person seemed weird as well.
I think k we were robbed of the actual valentines dance and a conclusion for the lives of all the side characters too.

Jude is a teenage Cupid who has been studying love their whole life. On probation after falling in love with a boy on their previous assignment, Jude is given a chance to show that they are ready to be off probation. Their new assignment has Jude going to a high school for the first time in their life, tasked with making two former best friends realize that they love each other and are destined to be together. Jude knows they can do this, but living life like a normal human teen is more complicated than they expect.

This is my first book from Mason Deaver, but it definitely won’t be my last. I loved all the characters in this book, and I wish we could have more books in this universe where we could get to know more about the Cupids’ world. The ending could definitely leave possibilities for a sequel, IMO!

Many thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

I went into this excited due to it being another Mason Deaver book but kinda forgot the premise before I started it. And what could I say the title is just so perfect. We follow Jude, a Cupid, who's tasked with helping people come together. This time they are tasked with helping Huy and Alice fix their differences and get together but obviously this is no easy task. So throughout the book we see Jude try and work their magic while also trying to come to a better understanding of themself and their life that they want to live. Something that I absolutely loved, as it really went down the route of following what you want in life while also navigating the complexities of people wanting you to live your life a certain way, and getting through past "mistakes". With of course a lot of romance elements in their as they are a cupid and tasked with it.

First off, I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was my first time reading one of Mason Deaver’s works, and I really enjoyed it! I found the concept interesting as soon as I read it: a teenage Cupid navigating the human world and falling in love. Humans are messy, which is why Cupids are there to help them when it comes to meeting “the one”, but Jude already messed up on their last assignment by falling for a human, which is forbidden. Their next assignment to prove that they’ve moved on ends up becoming more difficult than they originally thought. While it seemed a little obvious to everyone but Jude who was falling for who, I didn’t mind it. The book itself was an easy, fast-paced, enjoyable read where we got to see Jude make friends, fall in love and see what it’s like to live as a regular teenager.

Jude and their new friends (Huy, Alice, and Neve) were all likable characters, and the more we got to see Jude interact with them, the more it seemed clear that Jude wasn’t ready to say goodbye to them once this assignment was over.

As I was reading, I wasn’t totally sure what kind of ending the book would go for. What we got was a very hopeful ending. While we might not know exactly what happens next for Jude and Huy, I'd like to think that they got their happy ending and that no matter what, Jude is happy.

While I did enjoy the story, I do think that there could’ve been more of an explanation about Cupids. We only ever meet three cupids aside from Jude, so it would’ve been interesting to learn more about them and how their world works.

Overall, I give this book 4 stars!

While I love Mason Deaver's writing style and how they manage to write characters and their emotions I don't think this one was for me and I'm 100% gonna blame the fact that it's magical realism. The premise of Jude being a Cupid in training to make humans who are meant to be together fall in love having issues in the past of falling in love themselves so has to enter high school to pass a test of Cupid proportions and end up falling in love with a human again is fun, it's just not what I was expecting. The personal journey Jude goes through of figuring out who they are and the consequences of being a Cupid but wanting to be a normal person was well done. Overall it was a good book, I just usually don't like magical realism (and it took me 26 days to read this and the only reason I managed to finish it is cause it came out and I was able to get my hands on the really good audiobook).

Each of Mason Deaver’s books thus far really nails a feeling that is often hard to describe: the feeling of being ‘seen’ as a trans person—not only though the way people interact with you, but also by seeing yourself represented in real-life interactions with other trans people. By feeling connected to others going through similar experiences as you. Not only as a trans reader do I feel that with Mason’s characters, but also through the eyes of the characters. Watching Jude becoming friends with (and falling for) Huy was beautiful beyond just the love story, it was watching Jude becoming more of themself through knowing Huy.

This book warmed every corner of my heart, and knowing that books like this are available for young readers warms it even more.

Thank you to NetGalley and PUSH for providing an advanced review copy.

Jude is a Cupid. Their entire existence is meant to help humans find love. Cupids are meant to go unnoticed, and once a job is done, it is onto the next. There are few rules for Cupids, but one is to NEVER fall in love with a human. The first time a cupid kisses a human, the human will completely forget the Cupid. The second time, the Cupid will lose their powers and end up human.

Jude has broken the rule once. Can they make sure to never break it again?

My thoughts:

I went into this book expecting a very different story than what I got. The base idea is cool, but the execution was incredibly messy. I’ve read two other books from this author, and I firmly believe that this is their weakest book to date.

Pros:
- A fun story
- Lots of queer representation

Cons:
- The concept of Cupids is not well explained. They exist all over the world, but they are secretive. They can’t fall in love with humans but it’s okay if a Cupid falls for another Cupid? I have so many questions about how the Cupid system works, but we get almost no answers.
- Jude is so boring. They have a very circular way of thinking, and I find it hard to believe this character is supposed to be in high school. I know high schoolers can be dumb (I was one not very long ago), but they aren’t this out of it.
- There are some character interactions that deeply confuse me. Jude meets another character who is trans, and Jude is surprised (and excited) that this person is trans. The other character takes this as a bad thing and gets really defensive? It’s a really weird interaction, and going off my own experience as a trans person, it didn’t make sense.
- Jude’s family sucks. They are far from supportive and seem to never listen to what Jude wants for themselves. Yet they are written as being good???
- With no spoilers, the ending sucks.

Mason Deaver is a must-read author for me. I find their books to be a powerful combo of devastating and funny all at the same time which is quite the feat in my opinion. Okay, Cupid was no exemption to this duo of emotions. At the heart of the story is a lesson on love. Not just romantic love but friendship love and found family love. I thought the concept of Cupids helping humans to find each other was so lovely. There was just the right amount of angst for a YA book (as in it wasn't overwhelming).

Jude and Huy and Alice and Neve wormed their way into my heart and made a cozy little nest. I smiled a lot during the book and would recommend it to anyone! I found it to be a quick and mostly light read. It may be Mason's best work yet.

Rep: Non-binary, trans, Vietnamese main and side characters, queer side characters

Loved this so much!! Such a unique idea but with so much necessary discourse on gender and sexuality and what it’s like to be a queer teen.
Mason never disappoints and Jude and Huy were so lovely.

In "Okay, Cupid" by Mason Deaver, we follow Jude, a cupid on probation, tasked with reuniting two high school friends in the tumultuous world of teenage emotions.

While the book shines in its portrayal of diverse characters and skillful character development, it somewhat falls short in exploring the magical realism that defines Cupids. I wish we could have learned more about how the job itself worked, such as how Cupids exist and what their “spells” entail.

Despite the minor missed opportunities in world-building, the evolving friendships and engaging characters contribute to a story that is both heartwarming and enchanting. “Okay Cupid” is an entertaining mix of forbidden romance, intricate love triangles, and a sprinkle of magic, making it a fitting choice for YA enthusiasts.

Because it is January and I am looking to get into some books that are about love and relationships. I was looking to absolutely love the story now while I didn’t absolutely love it, I thought that it was very sweet and the main character was fairly likable.

So I started this out and about halfway through I was convinced that this was the Mason Deaver book I just couldn't get into. I love a good romantasy but the cupid aspects just fell flat. If there's going to be a secret magical world I need it to be developed. And OK Cupid never really spends to much time on the magical aspects of it all. But I shouldn't have doubted because four books in I should know that I've never read a Mason Deaver book where they didn't grip me by the soul at the end of it. The moment of hope right before a truly devastating bittersweet ending it just had me. OK Cupid pulls through.

last year i read the feeling of falling in love, and, well….i fell in love with it. so when i saw @mason_deaver had a new book coming out, i had to have it the day it came out. and i was not disappointed by this book, to say the least.⁣
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jude is a cupid, or a magical non-human entity who’s mission in life is to help humans fall in love. i’ll admit, the concept sounds a bit cheesy because it is….in the best way. cupid magic allows cupids to enter the lives of a human, nudge them in the right direction (engineering the perfect coffee shop meet cute for two people who were meant to be together, but hadn’t yet organically crossed paths)⁣
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the only problem is that jude fell for a human, which is strictly against the rules. to prove that jude won’t let this happen again, they are tasked with a tougher mission: help two estranged friends find their way back to one another and fall in love. and although jude has the best intentions of helping huy and alice realize their true potential and playing matchmaker in a traditional sense, they underestimate how complicated human emotions can be. ⁣
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i loved this book and january was the perfect time for it to be released. if you’re looking for something to help thaw you from the cold of winter, or if you’re in a slump and need a pick me up - this book is the perfect cure. the sunshine to your midnight rain. it’s emotional without being super heavy and the characters are all so well written and easy to root for. the trans rep in this book is so well done, and i want to talk more about it but i also don’t want to spoil anything so go read it and then DM me so we can gush !

I've loved every book Mason Deaver has written and this is no exception. young adult romance has been getting away from me a bit but their books are always ones i will read. This had a subtle magic element to it that just added so many new layers to the story and to the conflict and the ending was so bittersweet but with the promise of more sweetness to come in Jude and huy's story and I love them