Don't Cosplay With My Heart - Cecil Castellucci [Review]

Title: Don’t Cosplay With My Heart

Author: Cecil Castellucci

Genre: Romance,Young Adult, Contemporary

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Original publishing date: January 2nd 2018

Pages: 288

Rating

★★★☆☆

Hello! Today I’m reviewing a book that just came out. I read it like three months ago, but I’m always a mess and slow to write reviews.

Don’t Cosplay with my Heart tells us the story of Edan Kupferman, a girl who is passing through a tough moment in her life, her family is a mess, her best friend is gone for the summer, and her crush is confusing. Edan is a hardcore fan of a comic titled Team Tomorrow, mainly a fan of a female antihero, Gargantua. She wants to be like Gargantua, powerful, strong, and able to express her emotions, so she decides to cosplay the character for a local convention and then her passion for cosplaying this character grows because it’s a way she has to express herself.  

When Edan's cosplaying, she can be angry, loud, and not the good girl everyone thinks she is.

And when she's at conventions, she feels like she's found her own Team Tomorrow. But when her personal life starts to spiral out of control, Edan has to figure out whether she needs a sidekick, or if she has the strength to be the hero of her own story. 

This is a short book, a fast paced and light read. It has an interesting approach to geek culture, I hadn’t read a book that focuses on geek stuff before, so it was a novelty for me that kept me interested because I like attending to conventions, and I like videogames, comics and anime.  I got this book at San Diego Comic Con, a convention mentioned in this book.

I think Edan’s fanatism was sometimes extreme to the point she wanted to merge herself with her favorite character. I suppose it’s something that happens to some people, but I thought she was being kind of ridiculous sometimes.

Cecil Castellucci. 

I’m not sure if Team Tomorrow is a real comic, because when I looked up for Gargantua it turned out there is a Marvel character with that name and the same abilities, but it’s a male instead of female like in the book. There were sections after each chapter where there is information about Team Tomorrow, the characters and the creators of the comic. This information was a filler, the book is short but this helped it to stretch more. I read all the information in those sections, but if you don’t read them, it doesn’t really make a difference.

Even if Team Tomorrow and Gargantua’s story don’t add much to the plot, it’s still interesting and I think it’s good book material. If Rainbow Rowell wrote a book about a fanfic featured in Fangirl, I think Castellucci can write one about Team Tomorrow.

The characters in the book are okay, but I couldn’t feel connected with them at all, maybe because the book is short. Edan is an interesting main character, even thou I liked her geeky self, I still found her self-centered and selfish with those around her. She enclosed herself in her pain and ignored everyone else’s. Also, besides the second love interest, the rest of the characters were really mean with her, sometimes exaggerating and I couldn’t like them anymore afterwards.

The ending feels rushed and kind of abrupt; I still have some questions that were not answered in the end. There is a part in which she is blamed for something serious she didn’t do, and none believes her and that issue is never really resolved, the culprit doesn’t pay for what he did.

I must admit the characters were diverse, there was a lesbian character, but as always it was side character who also happened to be Asian, killing two birds with one stone. I was surprised that one of the love interests was a latino boy, it’s rare to find latinos represented in books, thou at first he and his cousin had this cholo stereotype vibe.

I liked the romance, it’s slow but healthy and portrays a good relationship that blooms out of a good friendship, and they support each other even in the hardships.

Don’t Cosplay with my Heart (I still think the title is kinda funny) is a light and enjoyable read, I think it’s perfect if you like geek stuff like conventions and superheroes. It shows a main character growing and overcoming her difficulties, and also shows a contrast of an unhealthy vs. a healthy romantic relationship, and the stigma that girls can’t enjoy of geek stuff, or if they do they are feign to seem interesting or special. If you like comics, cosplay, or geek stuff in general, you’ll probably enjoy this book.