Silvia 's Reviews > Leo Loves Aries

I was sent a review copy by the publisher via Netgalley, but all opinions are my own.

(book #1 in my pride month challenge)

Loving this book took a huge weight off my chest. I'm so happy I loved it, because after being slightly disappointed in True Colors, I was really scared that Anyta Sunday was a one-hit wonder for me (yes, I'm talking about rock).

While I think rock was still better in a lot of ways (the writing, the conflict, plus it fed my love for geology sorrynotsorry), this one was pretty damn close (and I even might have preferred some things more than in rock).

Granted I couldn't give two shits about the horoscope or zodiac signs or all that (and that's the reason why I didn't start this book sooner), this "leading theme" (which is something apparently all Anyta Sunday's books have -at least the ones I read so far) wasn't too huge and I ended up not even hating it (mostly because it was actually the protagonist's mom who was kinda obsessed with such things and not the protagonist himself).

ANYWAY THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANNA TALK ABOUT because this book is awesome and amazing and all good adjectives so please read it.

The relationship is fucking great, I shipped them from their very first interaction and it WASN'T because I knew they were going to be the main ship so I just kinda went with it: I really shipped them REAL HARD. And the way they moved from kinda hating each other (but not really) to being friendly and then best friends (view spoiler)[and then FWB and then f i n a l l y loversssss (hide spoiler)] was one of the best relationship development I've read in a contemporary in a while.

The thing is, there was a huge potential for this book to be totally cliché and make me roll my eyes (especially at the way the MC is oblivious to the nature of his feelings), but it was written so well that everything made a lot of sense and I never had the feeling that his being in denial of his feelings was a way to just drag the plot.

I loved every single character and the plot was always very domestic (I mean almost nothing happens except for relationship dynamics) but never boring. Also there was some awesome representation besides the one you would normally except in a MM romance: Leone, the MC's sister, is blind (and awesome btw, she's such a great and funny character); a side character is demisexual; also the MC never gets too caught up in labels when it comes to himself. The only thing he says in the matter is "I'm not gay", which is true since he's previously only had relationships with girls. I know some people want to see clear words like "bisexual" or "pan" in a book, but for me to be honest I really like it when things are seen as more fluid and not set in stone. That's the kind of representation I recognize myself into so I'm always really happy when I see it. I also liked that there was no major freak out at the discovery to be attracted to a man, and to top it off perfectly, the MC even acknowledges that he has that kind of privilege since his family is extremely accepting. I don't know, it was a nice touch that the author didn't really need to include but I'm happy she did because it's important.

There's so many more things that I could talk about but I'm just going to close this review by saying

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