Book Review: Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

Fangirl meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this funny and poignant coming-of-age novel from New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren about two boys who fall in love in a writing class—one from a progressive family and the other from a conservative religious community.

Three years ago, Tanner Scott’s family relocated from California to Utah, a move that nudged the bisexual teen temporarily back into the closet. Now, with one semester of high school to go, and no obstacles between him and out-of-state college freedom, Tanner plans to coast through his remaining classes and clear out of Utah.

But when his best friend Autumn dares him to take Provo High’s prestigious Seminar—where honor roll students diligently toil to draft a book in a semester—Tanner can’t resist going against his better judgment and having a go, if only to prove to Autumn how silly the whole thing is. Writing a book in four months sounds simple. Four months is an eternity.

It turns out, Tanner is only partly right: four months is a long time. After all, it takes only one second for him to notice Sebastian Brother, the Mormon prodigy who sold his own Seminar novel the year before and who now mentors the class. And it takes less than a month for Tanner to fall completely in love with him

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Short and Sweet: One of the sweetest romances I have ever read in my life.

First off, let me just say that I am actually stupid. The reason being is that when I first picked up this book, I thought, “Oh cool, a new author that I’ve never read before.” And then as the book went on I thought, “This author (authors?) is awesome and I’m sure I’ll have a ton of books by her (them?) that I’ll be able to read after this and I can fall into a spiral of binge reading an authors entire collection.” Come to find out, this fine duo wrote the Beautiful Bastards series that I binge-read back in January 2016. So yeah, I feel a little dumb right now.

Okay, let’s get started:

I don’t really know how to put my feelings and emotions into words right now.

I spent the entire time feeling hopeful for Sebastian and Tanner, hopeful that they’d get to be together, happy during the moments that they were and devastated when they were apart. I have never shipped a couple so hard in my life.

I was angry at Sebastian’s parents for using religion as an excuse to hate and for making love seem conditional. Mostly, I was angry that although this is a work of fiction, these things still happen and there are people like that out there. One thing that I’ve always known is ‘Love is love regardless of what parts you or the person you love has.’ It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter.

It was frustrating to read, but I kind of think that was the point. Not only was this a love story, or a coming of age story, it gave you a glimpse into the reality that not everyone thinks bisexuality or homosexuality is okay.

As sad and heartbreaking as this novel was, it was still an absolute joy to read. I loved everything about it. All the characters seemed so realistic. Seriously, was this a work of fiction? With how real everything seemed, I’m not even sure.

Anyways, the rest of this is basically just going to be me repeating over and over again how much I loved this. Go. Read it. Cry, laugh, smile, be angry, feel all things and then close the book and think about it for hours like I did.

All the wonderful, sad, happy stars.