European boarding schools, princesses, and scandal—what more could you want in a rom-com? The novel Nobody in Particular by Sophie Gonzales is a charming, foot-kicking, giggle worthy story that should absolutely make it onto your June TBR. Danni is a music student on scholarship at a prestigious boarding school in the fictional European country Henland, just hoping to make it through the school year with her head down. Rosemary, the princess of said country, is also a student at Bramppath College, who has her fair share of drama. Together, the two find their way through a world of expectations and the elite, deal with rich out-of-touch highschoolers, and fight their way to a happily-ever-after. Is the book realistic? Of course not, but that is what makes it so good.
Today, everyone puts queer books or shows under a microscope—especially sapphic ones. They pick the stories with happy endings apart with their justification that “it just is not realistic” to cover the prejudice beneath. But I genuinely could not care any less that it is not a realistic storyline for a girl from Colorado to end up with the princess of a European country. It is just as unrealistic for two brothers to fight over the same girl for several years (I am sure we know to which series I am referring to), or for a pop-star to have her car break down in the front lawn of a baker with a heart of gold’s house (When in Rome by Sarah Adams). And yet, I never hear anyone say anything about those plots, all-too-happy to enjoy the heartwarming (or sometimes not), ridiculous tales.
The novel itself is similar to a coming-of-age story, with both characters finding themselves—or rather, picking themselves back up—throughout the plot. Both Danni and Rosemary had gone through some difficult things before the start of the novel, with Danni being bullied at her last school and Rose experiencing something quite traumatic in watching a friend die, and the author handles the intricacies of their individual struggles very well in the story. Nothing is brought up one for dramatics and then dropped without being mentioned again, which I feel is a plot hole that pops up in one too many books.
Just overall, Nobody in Particular is such a cute high-school rom-com that I think should be much more mainstream than it is, especially since we already have such a lack of sapphic representation in media even today. It has the same cringy-addictive writing that all the good young-adult romances have, it is emotionally complex while still being lighthearted (relatively), and the novel feels like a fairytale. It is a childhood dream come true for all the girls who wanted to marry Sleeping Beauty instead of Prince Charming. So, if it sounds like something that you may find interesting, I highly suggest you add it to your list (at the top, because I know that we all are never getting the books at the bottoms of our ever-growing TBR’s.)
