Book Review: I Was Born For This

 I Was Born For This

By Alice Oseman

(Finished reading: 31/05/20)

3/5 stars

Diverse, bright, fun.

“In an otherwise mediocre existence, we chose to feel passion.”

I Was Born For This is Alice Oseman’s third YA novel that follows dual perspectives of Angel Rahimi and Jimmy Kaga-Ricci. Angel is an 18-year old Muslim fangirl of UK-based rock band The Ark who arrives in London to meet her internet friend for The Ark’s final gig in their tour. Jimmy is the lead singer of the Ark alongside his two childhood friends and they are about to sign a new contract which will lead them to international fame. But both Angel and Jimmy’s weeks don’t go quite as expected.

This book was a lot of fun to read. Alice Oseman really is the queen of diverse representation in YA fiction. It makes me so happy to read about such interesting and different characters. For starters, our main female protagonist is a witty, hijab-wearing, band-obessed teenage girl and our main male protagonist is a Christian trans-man who is lead singer of a popular boy band. Not only this, but we are also presented with characters of differing races, sexualities and economic backgrounds. (I loved all the characters, but Bliss was just my absolute favourite, I’d read an entire book centred just around her because I thought she was just incredible.) I loved to see how even within the novel, some character will make a stereotype about another character and they are corrected and educated. Oseman purposely takes all these stereotypes littered in the media and spins them into something completely different. This was so powerful and I’m so happy to see these harmful stereotypes and generalisations being subverted, particularly in content directed towards younger readers. It is amazing that almost anyone can pick up this book and see a part of themselves in one of these characters. It is only through reading Oseman’s books that it has come to my attention how many books (and other forms of media) are significantly lacking in this sort of diverse representation. Oseman does this in such a casual way, none of these representations feel too forced or that they are there for the sake of it. I was even more happy to see in the acknowledgements that Oseman had enlisted the help of both Muslim and trans individuals for real life accounts of their experiences. This explains why the characters experience come across as so genuine and really adds to the reading experience. The diversity throughout this book is largely what made it such an enjoyable read.

Aside from diversity, this novel brings up some really enlightening themes about fan culture, in particular, fan culture in the online age. From the ‘60s “Beatlemania”, the internet has hugely amplified the scale of obsession and significance of what it is to be a hard-core fan in the 21^st century. Throughout the book, Oseman uses a lot of religious imagery to compare the deep sense of faith that individuals experience as being a part of a fandom. I found this really fascinating and I wholly agree with this comparison. Fan culture is something that is so powerful and yet edges towards dangerous territory when it becomes an unhealthy obsession. Particularly, how the power of teenage girls’ passion can become destructive. Oseman explores this idea really beautifully throughout the book. I really liked how she mirrored this with Angel and Jimmy’s religious faith to Islam and Christianity. It really highlighted how fandoms really are the religion of our generation. We are presented with a warning of what will happen when we let fan culture consume our lives, both as a celebrity and as a fan, and this was golden.

The topic of mental health is also dealt with very nicely. Jimmy’s experience with anxiety was central to the plot and was really effective at presented the ugly side of fame and fortune. His paranoia just brought to life how horrible it must be to be someone who everyone knows everything about. The pressure of the media was also a big part of the book, both from journalists and fans. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to Jimmy’s anxiety, or at least empathise with his experience with a greater understanding of the struggles that many face every day.

Although I found this book a really fun read, there was some aspects that I really disliked. Firstly, I much preferred Jimmy’s perspective to Angel’s. I think this is where the interesting themes lay and where the richness of the story consisted. Angel’s perspective was ok, but it just read like a completely different book. This was good in terms of building a clear contrast between the two stories, but the tones just felt too different and it took away from the key overall themes. I didn’t really get how Angel’s relationship with her parents added to the story and I think we could have done without this sub-plot. I thought Mac’s character was kind of unnecessary, other than as a source of tension in Angel’s story, but this wasn’t even tied up properly. I liked the two perspectives, I just wanted Angel’s to be much more interesting in order to match the depth of Jimmy’s.

Secondly, I thought that the pacing felt really off in places. The beginning of the book dragged, the middle was good, and then the end really dragged. This is pretty rare because usually it’s the middle of the book that drags, but in this instance the middle was probably the most enjoyable part for me. The ending (I suppose the whole third act section) was the worst part in my opinion, it was just so bizarre and didn’t do a good job at bringing together all the subplots. There was just too much going on at once and too many characters to follow. It lost all momentum and suspense that had been built up towards this point and this was so disappointing. I think part of the problem was the major plot points were mostly very far-fetched and unrealistic; at times it felt a bit like badly written fan fiction because nothing made much sense. I really think that this book would have been better if it were at least 100 pages shorter and just a simpler story about fan culture. It was such a shame that it wasn’t because the concept had so much potential for a great book but, for me, I just felt it didn’t deliver on this.

Overall, if I were to rank this book in comparison to Oseman’s other novels, I liked it a lot more than Solitaire, but I definitely didn’t love it as much as Radio Silence. Despite my dissatisfaction with the plot, the characters and themes were excellent, and I had a lot of fun reading it. Oseman has such a gift for writing colourful characters and I can’t wait to read her fourth novel, Loveless, when it is released next month!