LEAH ON THE OFFBEAT will most often be referred to as the sequel to Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which is both true and unfair to the book. First, I adored Simon vs. when I read it, it filled a warm and fuzzy gap that I needed. LEAH ON THE OFFBEAT is not that book, but that sort of makes it better because it’s true to Leah. (To be fair to this book, I will not mention Simon vs. again.)
The story is about Leah Burke, a senior in high school who is a prickly, opinionated, fat, bisexual girl. She also happens to have a very big crush on her friend, which complicates how she navigates that friendship. And one of the best things about this book is the fact that no one tries to change Leah into a cheerier version of herself. They appreciate her for her. And similarly, Leah is very comfortable with herself, even if she is not out as bisexual to her friends.
If the book were to have a theme, it would be friendship. This book is pretty much a meditation on friendship, specifically teenage friendships between girls. And in general, it’s unflinching because of who Leah is. When one of her closest friends does something crappy, Leah calls her out. This event is what forces Leah to spend more time with her crush and love interest because there’s now a rift in the friend group. And time together is what forces the love interest to really question who she is and how she feels. (I’m being cagey here, but it’s pretty obvious at least a quarter of the way into the book who the love interest is, but maybe you want to be surprised.)
With friendship and its boundaries as a theme, the sometimes complicated nature of friendships between queer girls and women is at the forefront. Leah spends time picking apart interactions. Were they holding hands as friends? Was the love interest into Leah’s art as a friend or more? Did the love interest understand what Leah was thinking when she drew that thing? How is Leah to know when someone has stepped over that line from very good friend to love interest when the behaviors are almost identical?
Because LEAH ON THE OFFBEAT is a young adult romance, there is a fair amount of angst, and Leah, as a self-described Slytherin, doubles down on the angst. Raised by a single mother, her family struggles with money. She struggles with her relationship with her father, or lack thereof. And she worries about her friends and if they can be as close after they all leave for college.
If I have one complaint, it’s about the ending. Before you panic, there is the YA version of an HEA (so really an HFN). Don’t worry! Leah gets the girl!
My complaint is about what happens between that “let’s be together” moment and the epilogue we jump to immediately. The book spends so much time on the complications of friendship that ignoring this very particular change for all of the friends feels like a cheat. There will be endless complaints about who the love interest is because of supposed rules, but that rule is not really a rule. And I am being cagey on purpose so no one hates me, but maybe you hate me anyway. My point is that I did not want the messiness glossed over or ignored. We are all messy, let me read about people being messy like I am, that’s all.
So, yeah, I really liked LEAH ON THE OFFBEAT. Leah is the prickly, fat, bisexual heroine of my heart, and I’m beyond relieved she fell in love with a Hufflepuff (even if the book says Gryffindor, she’s totally a Hufflepuff).
Content warnings: racism from a secondary character, friend breakups, money worries, fatphobia from a secondary character
