Book Review: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This book is about two teenage boys, Ari and Dante, who become friends over the summer and through letters, broken bones and confusion, try to find their place in the world and their families.

I loved this story, I loved the interactions between the characters, their relationships with their parents (something that often gets ignored in Teen/YA books) and the simple and understated love between them. There were moments that I teared up – it was yet another father-child scene which never fail to make me cry – and moments where I laughed out loud.

This book isn’t about struggling to come to terms with sexuality, it isn’t a love story that takes over every facet of their lives, it’s a connection between Ari and Dante that grows into something more than being ‘just friends’.

The boys’ place within their families was something that intrigued me as well. Ari was born after his father returned from the Vietnam war and 12 years after his sisters who he hears mentioning that he was born “too late”. Ari’s relationship with his father was heartbreaking to read, his frustration with the situation so clear to himself yet not seen by his father. The scenes between them are some of my favourites in the whole novel and they are wonderful. Dante’s family seems shockingly close when Ari first meets them, and Ari is quickly welcomed into the fold, however Dante feels distanced from his heritage as he doesn’t understand some of the things that Ari does in terms of Mexican culture and doesn’t speak Spanish. Dante’s insistence that his new sibling will be a boy (so that his parents will have grandchildren) and will have a Mexican name (so that he doesn’t feel displaced like him) was a bittersweet moment for Dante’s cultural and sexual identity.

All in all, I gave this book 5/5 stars on Goodreads and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. There were no lulls or boring parts, nothing that I felt I had to ‘just get through’, this story was witty and touching and wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a LGBTQ YA with a big dose of family stuff.