The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love
by Sarvenaz Tash
Young Adult
249 pages
Published 2016

The title of this book had me wary from the start, but I’d heard good things about it, and the author is a woman, so I hoped it wouldn’t be what it sounded like. Because seriously. We don’t need more books about angsty white guys complaining about the girl they love not liking them back.

Unfortunately that’s exactly what I got in this book.

First, the good points. The author has a very immersive writing style, and she captured the feeling of a Comic Con VERY impressively. I haven’t been to NYCC, but I’ve been to other nerdy cons, and the hectic pace of panels, and getting tickets, and standing in lines, but nerding out over ALL THE GEEKY STUFF – yeah, that was perfectly written. I really enjoyed that. The other characters – Casey and Felicia, specifically, and Samira, and the rest of Roxy and Graham’s families – those were also well done. The brief scene with Roxy’s Iranian family was especially nice, which is to be expected from an Iranian-American author!

But Graham irritated me. Roxy wasn’t well explored because we only saw things from Graham’s point of view, and her love interest Devin’s appeal wasn’t shown very well at ALL.

I spent most of the book wanting to yell at Graham to just TALK TO HER ALREADY. He’s all miffed that his plans aren’t going right and the obnoxious Brit is stealing his girl but he won’t. Just. TALK. To her.

I think the only reason I actually finished the book was because it was short. And for the description of Comic Con, that was actually really good. But the main character was just frustrating. I should have spent this time on another book.

From the cover of The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love:

Graham met his best friend, Roxy, when he moved into her neighborhood eight years ago and she asked him which Hogwarts house he’d be sorted into. Graham has been in love with her ever since. 

But now they’re sixteen, still neighbors, still best friends. And Graham and Roxy share more than ever – moving on from their Harry Potter obsession to a serious love of comic books.

When Graham learns that the creator of their favorite comic, The Chronicles of Althena, is making a rare appearance at this year’s New York Comic Con, he knows he must score tickets. And the event inspires Graham to come up with the perfect plan to tell Roxy how he really feels about her. He’s got three days to woo his best friend at the coolest, kookiest con full of superheroes and supervillains. But no one at a comic book convention is who they appear to be . . . even Roxy. And Graham is starting to realize his fictional love stories are way less complicated than real life ones.