eARC Review – Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

Title: Perfect on Paper

Author: Sophie Gonzales

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Publication date: March 9th, 2021

304 pages

4/5 stars

Goodreads Synopsis

In Sophie Gonzales’ Perfect on Paper, Leah on the Offbeat meets To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: a bisexual girl who gives anonymous love advice to her classmates is hired by the hot guy to help him get his ex back

Her advice, spot on. Her love life, way off.

Darcy Phillips:
• Can give you the solution to any of your relationship woes―for a fee.
• Uses her power for good. Most of the time.
• Really cannot stand Alexander Brougham.
• Has maybe not the best judgement when it comes to her best friend, Brooke…who is in love with someone else.
• Does not appreciate being blackmailed.

However, when Brougham catches her in the act of collecting letters from locker 89―out of which she’s been running her questionably legal, anonymous relationship advice service―that’s exactly what happens. In exchange for keeping her secret, Darcy begrudgingly agrees to become his personal dating coach―at a generous hourly rate, at least. The goal? To help him win his ex-girlfriend back.

Darcy has a good reason to keep her identity secret. If word gets out that she’s behind the locker, some things she’s not proud of will come to light, and there’s a good chance Brooke will never speak to her again.

Okay, so all she has to do is help an entitled, bratty, (annoyingly hot) guy win over a girl who’s already fallen for him once? What could go wrong?

Review

Perfect on Paper is a queer contemporary romance novel following Darcy, a junior in high school who runs a dating advice locker in her school. It’s completely anonymous, you slip $10 and what you need into an empty locker and you receive dating advice from the relationship genie, aka Darcy. But, when Darcy is caught by Alexander Brougham, her anonymity is threatened. He hires her to help him get back together with his ex-girlfriend. Darcy needs to save her anonymity, otherwise her best friend (and the girl she loves) Brooke will be lost to her forever…

I really need more of this book because phew boy was it so good!! Honestly I could’ve used Darcy’s romance advice during high school, girlfriend really did her research for her answers. I always love a good high school romance and this book brought up some amazing commentary on biphobia and what it means to be queer in high school. Their Queer and Questioning club was mentioned often in the book and I love reading more and more queer content.

Brougham was my absolute favorite character and I just want to give him a hug. I need him in my life to be quite frank. I found Darcy went too far in her issues with Brooke and it hurt her as a character in my eyes. It seemed to cross just a bit over the line, which is why the point lost a star for me.

If you read Glimpsed, another recent release, and loved it then you will really enjoy this one!

Thank you to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Happy reading, folks!