from James--

I enjoyed this book a lot. Saenz writes with sentimentality without becoming sentimental and captures a lot of the angst of mid-teenage boys trying to figure how and when they become men. The reader becomes invested in the characters and hopes for the best.

My biggest complaint is with the last twenty pages. It's a perfectly fitting and fine ending, but feels too neatly wrapped up, almost like he hit his word count and said, "okay, here's the big finish." Still, I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a book about finding yourself. ( )

Prachtig coming-of-age boek over twee puber jongens die een vriendschap opbouwen. Fijne korte hoofdstukken, vlot geschreven. Absolute aanrader! ( )

This book follows Aristotle and Dante as they develop a tight friendship and learn more about the universe and growing up. They discover their identities, their families, and what it means to be LGBTQ in Southern Texas in the 1980s. This book is for high school students because of the intense subject matter and length, but it was so well written and beautiful. I'm using this for my book club because of the LatinX representation and life experience that it covers, as well as the themes of growing up and discovering identity. ( )

4.5/5

Dinging this a half a star because the writing didn't translate well to audio (though I think I would have had the same, if not more of, issue reading the text). That said, I liked the fact that there was no narrative structure - just moments of a teenager trying to figure his way through feelings of anger, adulthood, friendship, love, grief, compassion, and sexuality.

Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda narrates the audiobook. It should be listened to for him alone. ( )

"When do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?"

I think this is a very good book, just not one for me.
I thought getting to know Dante and Ari (Aristotle) was interesting. At first, it was a little slow but I thought I would be okay with that. But something in the writing style really held me from getting invested. This read more like a look back on a childhood than something I really felt. I really wanted to love this one - it has all the right elements to love. I'm so glad others do love it. ( )

Expected it to be a little twee with the trope of lonely angsty teens finding each other...but it grew on me. I would have been interested in a bit more about the challenges of being Mexican-American. ( )

An easy and pleasant read. TBH can’t see what all the fuss was about tho, it’s a nice story, about nice people which has a nice ending… ( )

This is not what I thought this book was going to be. I understand that this is a staple when it comes to the LGBTQ+ side of BookTok. and I can see why. The writing did scare me because you can tell it was written in 2012. I know that I would have been more affected by this book if I had read this in 2012. I think a queer youth would benefit the most when it comes to reading this book. I did enjoy this book though. ( )

Sweet, lovely, teen angsty book. Story of a friendship between two bright, sweet boys who are struggling with some very real issues and who move apart and together. I love the way they talk to each other (and hate when they don't!). Both feel like outsiders and their friendship makes them feel just a little more like they belong. I especially loved the way they talked about their Mexican culture. ( )

Kudos to the author for this unusual plot line! I really liked how the characters grew in this novel.
I found myself being so much similar to Ari's character except for the... Well, you'll know what I mean when you read it. Most of all, I really liked the theme of stargazing when they have problems, because it's also my thing.

Very good coming-of-age novel! So much feelings for this... ( )

I am enchanted by this book. It was so good. Everything about it feels just right.
I love how it deals with identity: ethnic identity, friend idenity, identity within a family, sexual identity and finally identity as a person, as in knowing who we are and what we want out of life. ( )

Pense que iba a ir sobre filosofía pero es la historia de un par de chavales en una ciudad por ahi.

Es una historia de niños convirtiéndose en hombres, y de aprender a ser tu mismo.

Esta escrito en primera persona y la cantidad de introspección del protagonista es lo que mas me ha gustado, la trama es realmente una excusa para avanzar su mundo interior, ahi es donde el verdadero drama esta ocurriendo. ( )

#BookReview

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
Author: Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Contemporary YA, Bildungsroman, LGBTQIA Fiction

Reading YA is always a risky business when you are...well... not a Young Adult. ( )

Yes, this is a beautiful tender book - I didn't finish unfortunately.

Because it didn't pull me to a finish I'm not giving it more than 3 stars. It's probably not the fault of the book but more that I find young adult novels set in early high school don't hold my attention like books about adults. ( )

I wasn't expecting to be sold on this book upon picking it up, despite my intrigue at the title and setting. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed it. Sanez expertly uses repetition to build complex characters, establishing speech patterns and a supporting culture through subtle details in something as simple as truncated speech and thoughts that reflect the speaker's voice perfectly, never breaking character. I did have to wonder though: When Ari's parents confront him about his sexuality toward the end of the novel, is his reaction real? That is, would a Latino teenager in the '70's respond positively to his sexuality being revealed to him by his parents? He seemed to accept it pretty quickly and without a fight. (You could argue that he'd been fighting it the whole novel, but I don't buy that. It's one thing to be subconsciously aware of confusing sexual impulses, and another to be confronted with it in a conversation that essentially has you backed into a corner.) The book spent a lot of time establishing that Ari liked to fight and had enough inner turmoil to fuel it for the foreseeable future. I just wasn't sold on the idea that he readily accepted the realization and had no other concerns about his identity that went along with it.
I'm not real big on romance stories and I appreciated that this is much more complicated than that. I was left with a satisfying appreciation for the character development that led to a fitting ending. ( )

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common.

But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT. THANKS!

My Review: First love, with another boy, when you're fifteen and angsty and from a Mexican-American family.

Wow, that's a lot. Like, a real, real lot.

Which, as adults, we sometimes do not take into account when dealing with teens. The thing we lose sight of most often is that teens have adult-strength emotions triggered by the same things we get triggered by but without our decades of perspective to temper our responses with. Ari's right...his Dad is suffering. His Dad is right...Ari can't understand this suffering. In fact, no one really can. Adults don't think this is as weird and awful as Ari, not yet used to the helplessness of loving others, does. All Ari knows is that his Dad's refusal to talk about his feelings feels like rejection. So Ari clams up...and doesn't see the irony of this. Perspective: missing.

Dante, being brash and bold, just...does stuff. Ari feels envious, astonished, drawn to this bigness and forcefulness. This feels so intoxicating, so overwhelmingly right, that he and Dante meet each other all the time, talk, think, and in that gloriously uniquely young man way, fall in love. They're on different pages here, too, stunningly. Dante doesn't see this love as weird or ugly...it's the 1980s! Stonewall was in the 1960s! Ari thinks it's another way he's weird. He does think Dante's weird, too, and if Dante...big, bright, beautiful Dante with his strong ideas about Chicanismo...is weird, weird must be okay. Somehow that must be true, but how?

Thus is first love born. That was my absolute favorite thing about the story. It wasn't about the zeal of the organs for each other, in Joseph Campbell's memorable and accurate formulation of sexual desire's essence; it was instead about the addictive rush of communion with the Other, the joy of discovering the Other is not only Other but gloriously beautifully Other. These boys discover, slowly and organically, that Love is the best, the only addictive drug that makes things better.

Or it can. And it does in this story. It does this, you should note, S L O W L Y. And Ari, angry teen with a huge rock on top of his mouth, needs help figuring out what it is about Dante that he is, well, Noticing. Here is where I felt the true beauty of the story comes to the fore. It is Ari's parents, these complicatedly wounded souls who are sources of difficulty for him (as all parents must be) who rip off the bandage and show him that he is in love with Dante.

And they do it, in 1980s El Paso, Texas, with kindness and acceptance. This is how we know it's fiction.

Everything about this read was a pleasure to me. It's been over a decade since the story burst on the scene. There are sequels (I haven't read those yet). This story keeps reverberating through our louding voices of hatred. I hope you and I, readers with mileage and perspective unavailable to its _target audience, can help that audience find this wonderful story of honest love and acceptance offered and accepted. ( )

Words cannot express how beautiful I thought this book was, so poignantly written, with believable and well developed characters that you feel so deeply for. I will be reading this book again.

Also props to Lin Manuel Miranda's narration. ( )

Almost perfect. ( )

I might have liked this more as a physical book; as an audio book, it dragged.

ETA: I had a similar experience with [b:In the Dream House|43317482|In the Dream House|Carmen Maria Machado|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547869259l/43317482._SX50_.jpg|65787792]: unimpressive as an audiobook, engrossing as text. It might have something to do with poetic writing short chapters; I should someday try this one again. ( )

"SAT in the backseat" ( )

I read this in one night—it was an intense, funny, and very readable portrait of two boys and their families. I feel compelled to compare it to A Separate Peace - the books have only a few elements in common but they seem to comment on one another.

Writing in first person, Saenz' pacing feels a little off, and the narrative style sometimes breaks conventional rules about showing vs. telling. I think this happened because he was listening to the voice of his character so intently, so it's not a grave fault.

The ending was not surprising, especially if you saw it reviewed, as I did, in professional magazines, but it was still very sweet. ( )

4.5 stars. This book made me laugh and cry, and it's been a while since a book has made me cry. I love Ari and Dante and their families are great. I liked seeing the contrast between Ari and Dante; Dante is very open and vulnerable and not afraid to be himself or say how he feels. Ari is emotionally closed off, which he gets from his parents, especially his dad. Ari has a hard time opening up to people and letting them in but Dante has a way of getting past his walls and barriers and I love seeing their friendship in this book. This is definitely a coming of age story and both Ari and Dante are learning about life and themselves. It was also interesting to see Dante's struggle with his identity as a Mexican American and not feeling like a "real" Mexican, though I wish we could have seen more of that internal struggle but we aren't reading from Dante's POV so I understand why we're limited. This book isn't very big on descriptions, so if you like a lot of descriptions than this is a downside, however I feel like the writing is very realistic and true to the voice of a 15 year old teenage guy (they're usually not big on descriptions). Overall I really enjoyed this one. ( )

Actual rating: 4.5/5

This book had been on my TBR for a very long time, and it is a firm favourite in the bookish community. So, when it was made available on NetGalley again for a limited time ahead of the sequel coming out later this year, I jumped at the chance to finally read it. And I am so, so glad I did.

Aristotle and Dante is a beautiful, tender and heart-wrenching coming of age story. I sometimes struggle to get really drawn into contemporary YA nowadays, but I had no such problem with this book. I was glued to this book from the very first page, right up to the end.

Ari and Dante are, for different reasons, two very complex and compelling characters. Seeing all events unfold through Ari's eyes, hearing his inner struggles first hand, made it almost impossible not to sympathise with him. Was he always making the best choices or behaving blamelessly? Oh, no. But then, he shouldn't really have to, and I was glad to get to know a teenage boy who actually faces the full struggle of living his teenage years in very difficult circumstances. His emotions are all over the place, but I found myself really understanding his pain and his struggle to communicate this to those around him.

By contrast, I found it harder to get really attached to Dante, but that is probably because he is always filtered by Ari. Still, he was also beautifully drawn, revealing his complexity and his inner torments only a little at a time. Their friendship is one of the sweetest, most tender friendships I can remember reading about, and I was there for it!

I also really liked the parents and how involved they were in their children's lives. Their patience and willingness to question themselves, and even challenge themselves when they realised their children needed them to, was absolutely brilliant and flawlessly executed. I love positive parent-child relationships in YA particularly, and this was one of the best I have seen.

One thing that was a bit hit-and-miss for me in an otherwise brilliant reading experience was the writing style. I generally like a more poetic style, similar to the one the author adopted here, and I liked how he managed to still keep the text simple without being weighed down by lyricisms. However, most of the dialogues, especially the ones between Ari and Dante, came across as a bit too clunky and unrealistic, even for two exceptional boys such as them. This is obviously a personal preference, but I found it really distracting and it happened just too often to ignore.

Despite that, I still loved this book and the calm, quiet way it deals with significant, life-changing, scary and, sometimes, outright painful themes of identity, belonging, family, friendship, love and, ultimately finding your place in the world. I'm really looking forward to the sequel now!
I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. ( )

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”

[b:Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe|12000020|Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1)|Benjamin Alire Sáenz|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328320260l/12000020._SY75_.jpg|16964419] is a coming of age story about two Mexican-American teenage boys who are trying to figure out their place in the world. It deals with topics such as friendship, identity, sexuality, and family relationships.

The story begins with Dante offering to teach Ari how to swim, and their friendship blossoms from there.

Throughout the novel, Dante is constantly teaching Ari about life and changes his perspective on a lot of topics. Ari hates his life but when he meets Dante, his life seems to be more tolerable and his outlook on many things seems to become more positive.

At the end of their first summer together, Ari pushed Dante out of the way of an oncoming car and is beaten up badly. Only weeks later, Dante moves to Chicago. This only makes their friendship grow stronger, whether they notice it or not.

Both are going through their own problems; Ari with his brother and Dante with his sexuality. The best part about friendship is the ability to go back to normal after not talking for so long, or after dealing with personal problems. Both boys are trying to find themselves in the world.

Ari struggles with family issues for a long time before his family finally opens up about why his brother is in prison. He also deals with his closed-off father, who is still scarred from his time in Vietnam.

Dante realizes he's into kissing boys instead of girls and is ashamed of himself. Dante gets caught kissing a boy in an alley and is beat up for it. Ari becomes protective and Dante and finds out who is responsible for giving his best friend pain.

We find out that Dante is in love with Ari in like the middle of the book...and Ari is still clueless about his sexuality. But when he comes to terms with the fact that he reciprocates those feelings, he also feels a sense of shame -- having been in love with his best friend and not realizing it.

But when the two fully realize and admit their feelings, the book closes with a happy ending. ( )

What a lovable cast in this book, I loved how it was awkward and painful and hard and still filled with love. ( )