The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love – Sarvenaz Tash

Title: The Geek's Guide to Unrequited Love by Sarvenaz Tash
Publishing Info: June 14, 2016 by Simon & Schuster
Source: Edelweiss
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: June 27, 2016

John Hughes meets Comic Con in this hilarious, unabashedly romantic, coming-of-age novel about a teenager who is trying to get his best friend to fall in love with him from the author of Three Day Summer.
Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy...
Archie and Veronica...
Althena and Noth...
...Graham and Roxy?
Graham met his best friend, Roxana, when he moved into her neighborhood eight years ago, and she asked him which Hogwarts house he’d be sorted into. Graham has been in love with her ever since.
But now they’re sixteen, still neighbors, still best friends. And Graham and Roxy share more than ever—moving on from their Harry Potter obsession to a serious love of comic books.
When Graham learns that the creator of their favorite comic, The Chronicles of Althena, is making a rare appearance at this year’s New York Comic Con, he knows he must score tickets. And the event inspires Graham to come up with the perfect plan to tell Roxy how he really feels about her. He’s got three days to woo his best friend at the coolest, kookiest con full of superheroes and supervillains. But no one at a comic book convention is who they appear to be...even Roxy. And Graham is starting to realize fictional love stories are way less complicated than real-life ones.

I love geeky/nerdy love stories so I knew I wanted to read this from the moment I saw the title! Full of geeky references, nerds galore, and an entire story revolving around Comic-Con, THE GEEK’S GUIDE TO UNREQUITED LOVE had me hooked from the start and kept me totally involved throughout the story!

GEEK’S GUIDE had so many wonderful things! A great friendship, a cute quest for romance, and tons of nerdy references. Without spoiling anything, I will say that I really, really loved the ending. GEEK’S GUIDE had all of that feeling of a John Hughes movie (the characters even have a strong love for John Hughes!) where the main character has some awesome quirks to make them totally unique but they’ve got a crush just out of reach (or way out of reach) except the ending wasn’t entirely predictable as some Hughes movies are. Graham went through a string of mishaps that any typical novel might have but nothing felt too predictable or cliche. I loved the way Sarvenaz Tash really created a novel that felt comfortable and familiar but still took its own path.

The setting of Comic-Con was absolute perfection. Being a book blogger who has been at the Javits Center a few times for Book Expo America, it was so much fun to see the characters in a specific location that I could relate to. I loved trying to picture where they were in the Javits Center throughout their time at NYCC and it really added a layer of reality to the book for me. I also just loved how a lot of the book took place at Comic-Con and how well it was portrayed. I moderated a book panel at a comic convention and I’ve been to several book conventions so it was fun to see the similarities in the novel as well as experience the differences.

I love best-friend-to-more romances and I really liked that GEEK’S GUIDE dealt with Graham’s crush on his best friend Roxy. It’s always such a tricky situation when you’ve got a friend-crush but there can also be so many wonderful butterflies! The problem that Graham faces is that he truly does not know if Roxy feels the same way and when you’re best friends, it’s impossible sometimes to tell where that line begins and ends. It’s always worrying reading a friends-to-more story because I always wonder what if it doesn’t work out? The friendship is likely ruined and then these characters that I love so much are in pieces. Again, I won’t give away the ending but I just really loved how Sarvenaz Tash handled every single situation in this book. Everything felt really true to the characters and really realistic as well.

If you’re looking for a fun, geeky, and sweet novel, THE GEEK’S GUIDE TO UNREQUITED LOVE will be a hit with you! I had such a blast reading it and I just loved Sarvenaz Tash’s writing. I’m a new fan and I can’t wait to read more from her! 

“The View from Goodreads” is a featured section in my reviews that I decided to incorporate! I tend to update my Goodreads status a LOT when I read — reactions, feelings, notes — so I thought it would be fun to share the sort of “reading process”! All status updates are spoiler-free (no specific plot points will be revealed) but will contain reactions to certain pages and/or characters!

Graham // Character Obsessions: Roxy, The Chronicles of Althena, epic gestures. 
Graham was great! I really loved how he felt like a nice, normal guy. He was funny, nerdy, sweet, down-to-earth, and a little over-the-top all at the same time. Aside from the normal cringey mistakes we’ve all made, I thought Graham handled everything really well and I just really enjoyed his character all around!
Roxy // Character Obsessions: Drawing, The Chronicles of Althena, friendship… more?
I thought it was so great that the big crush wasn’t some totally unattainable girl. She was smart, geeky, pretty, unique, but also relatable and normal. I really loved that the top percentage of the class was portrayed as normal kids and not just socially-inept nerds because the top of my class in high school was an incredibly diverse mix including some really good athletes too. I really appreciated that the unrequited love was on the best friend side and not on a totally unattainable girl.

Kept Me Hooked On: Nerd pride. I love geeky books and characters. It’s SO much fun to be nerdy sometimes and I love the books that celebrate that individuality and pride to be who you are.
Left Me Wanting More: Swoons. Don’t get me wrong — there were adequate swoons — but I could have a used a few more. That’s the problem with unrequited love, such as it is. The swooning is all on one side!

Addiction Rating
Read it!

Ahhh it was so much fun!

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