Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World

The character development and interpersonal relationships were just as beautiful as the first book, if not even more so, but the prose felt very rambly and at times almost unedited. A few of the same points were made repeatedly throughout the book in almost the same way, and nearly every paragraph felt like it was at least a sentence or two longer than it needed to be. If it had been edited down to be the closer to the same length as the first book, I think it could have been a solid five stars.

Still a beautiful read though. I am glad it exists.

Maybe it was because I listened to this book rather than read it and that makes the teenage affect much heavier, or maybe Lin Manuel-Miranda's voice reading teen boys in love broke my suspension of disbelief, but this book's writing felt heavy on the cheese and sentimentality and light on plot. I don't remember feeling that way about the initial book, which I really loved. The sequel has its moments – the author has a poetic style that frequently resolves in great lines, the incorporation of the AIDS pandemic and the stakes of queerness in this world being high, and the characterization of the parents especially is multilayered. (It's rare to get a YA book where parents are people too, and even good people central to the book.) Often I felt like this book walked in circles; I felt unconvinced at certain plot points.

Other reviews have correctly pointed out that the plot point of transphobia in the first book was not resolved or addressed in the second. In hindsight there's no reason why Ari's brother's crime had to use a trans woman as a victim when the books do not deal with broader trans representation or issues in any way.