Synopsis:
Will Tavares is the dream summer fling ― he’s fun, affectionate, kind ― but just when Ollie thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realizes it’s the same school Will goes to… except Ollie finds that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted ― and, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.
Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts “coincidentally” popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening.
The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him, trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again.
Right? Right.
Review:
Only Mostly Devastated was sat on my to be read for years until I finally picked it up in February. The anticipation of wanting to read this had built so much that my expectations would never meet the reality. I did enjoy this book, but when I found out it was a boy-meets-boy spin on Grease, I was extremely excited.
The Grease vibes were kind of there. They both meet in the summer, they think one of them is going home and they won’t see each other again (obviously that doesn’t happen), they both have their ‘cliques’ and when they finally see each other again it doesn’t go so well. That’s where the Grease likeness ends. Ollie doesn’t reinvent himself to get Will’s attention and there are no musical numbers. Well kinda. Ollie is in a band.
Speaking of Ollie, at times he was actually quite funny. Within the first chapter(s) you get this absolute belter of a line, “Score one for Ollie. Ethereal Being: three billion. The gap was closing.” This is exactly my type of humour. Yes, that gap is totally closing, just 2,999,999,999 points to go.
I’ve included this quote in my review purely because he mentions the book title. “Here walks Ollie Di Fiore. Master of his feelings, expert detacher, only mostly devastated.” For the longest time while reading, I was trying to figure out how this relates to Grease. I don’t think it does, but my brain kept wanting to call this book Only Mostly Devoted, you know, like the song from Grease (Hopelessly Devoted to You).
I think my favourite joke from Ollie in the entirety of Only Mostly Devastated was, “Sorry, I stopped texting you because my precise strain of “gay” was only temporary. Kind of like salmonella.”
Will was so unlikable to begin with. His friends are making jokes about who would marry Ollie and rightfully so Ollie is annoyed about it. Will’s defense is, “I don’t join in,” to which Ollie thinks “But do you stop them?” Having grown up in the generation where everything and everyone was ‘gay’ if people didn’t like it, this part really struck a chord with me. I was the one that would tell these types of people to shut up.
Only Mostly Devastated has my biggest pet peeve, “It’s three A.M. in the morning.” – Is this an American thing? You’ve already said A.M., you don’t need ‘in the morning’. I’ve noticed a lot of books by American authors do this. It’s also something that pops up in all media types. This isn’t a negative point against this book, just want to point out how annoying I find it. Just me?
This book is actually pretty sad, which I really wasn’t expecting. It has themes of terminal illness and the death of a family member, so please be aware of that before you pick it up.
Anyway, back to nice things. I really liked Ollie’s new friends – his old ones sucked a little, I can’t lie. They had such an interesting dynamic but they felt real. No friend group gets on 100% of the time. Teenagers say and do stupid things, and that is evidenced a lot in Only Mostly Devastated.
I do think the romance left a lot to be desired. You don’t get a whole lot of it really. The flashback summer scenes were nice, but there are only a few, and then in present day Will is so hot and cold with Ollie for 90% of the book, you don’t really feel like you’re reading a romance. I felt more invested in Lara’s love life than anyone else.
Anyway, I feel like this review has gone on for long enough so I’ll leave you with this lovely quote from Ollie once he realised that both he and Will were being a little silly when it came to their relationship. When they sorted everything out, they were pretty cute, “Maybe our Happily Ever After hadn’t worked on the first shot. And maybe Happily Ever Afters weren’t a singular event. Maybe they were something you had to work at, and build, and never give up on, as long as they were something you still wanted.”
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Like this post? Why not read this one too: Monthly Wrap Up: March 2026