Yet the thing that sets this book apart from the rest of its genre is not the inclusion of Queer people at all, but its immense emotional maturity and powerful discussions of biphobia. The story doesn’t try to stray from other books in its genre to make a point but rather gives Queer readers the same casual representation that cishet people get in every other book on the market. She holds to this sentiment with “Perfect on Paper” by crafting a romance between Darcy and Brougham that feels as un-self-consciously presented as any non-Queer relationship in a non-Queer book. Gonzales has been open in the past about how she tries to write stories about Queer people without trying to make any sort of greater point about the Queer experience. It has characters you can root for, a unique and engaging voice and more than its fair share of fun, tropey twists. “Perfect on Paper” is, by all accounts, a solid YA romance. Despite initially being blackmailed into their partnership, the more time Darcy spends with Brougham, the more she’s forced to confront the fact that love and relationships are more complicated than she’d like to believe, and sometimes you can’t rely on a generic formula for a genuine connection.

If he did, her best friend and long-time crush, Brooke, would discover that Darcy abused the locker’s power to do something horrible to her last year. But when it-boy Alexander Brougham (known throughout the book as Brougham) catches her in the act and discovers her identity as the girl behind locker 89, Darcy is forced to become his personal dating coach for fear he might expose her secret.

The beauty of Darcy’s service lies in its anonymity, which Darcy has managed to maintain for the last two and a half years without a hitch. Slip your payment, contact information and a letter with an explanation of your problem into the aforementioned locker, and in return, Darcy will send you personalized love advice, guaranteed to work or your money back. What would you have been willing to give for completely anonymous, personalized relationship advice in high school? Probably a lot more than 10 dollars, but that’s all Darcy Phillips, the mastermind behind locker 89 in Sophie Gonzales’s conventional yet refreshingly original teen romance “Perfect on Paper,” charges for her services.

Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales