Only Mostly Devastated

Only Mostly Devastated is a young adult romance by Sophie Gonzales, published in 2019, and it is a retelling of Grease with two boys at the centre.

Ollie spends a summer with Will, who is funny, affectionate and kind, and concludes that he has found something real. Then the summer ends and Will stops replying to his messages. A family emergency forces Ollie to move across the country, and the new school he enrols in turns out to be Will's, which gives him a front-row seat to the version of his summer boyfriend that exists during term time: a class clown, closeted, and frankly a bit of a jerk. Ollie has no intention of pining after somebody who clearly is not ready for a relationship, and a good deal of the novel is spent watching him try to keep to that resolution while the rest of his life, including a sick relative at home, demands his attention. Gonzales writes the book with a great deal of humour and a serious interest in what fear does to a teenager.

The novel is about the difference between who a person is on holiday and who they are under pressure, and about how long somebody should be expected to wait.