Solitaire and Radio Silence: How they feel similar and how they feel different

 

Two books that I've read recently are Radio Silence and Solitaire, both by the author Alice Oseman. Radio Silence was the one I read first, after hearing about it from one of the posters around the school. After I had finished it, since I had liked the book so much I went to go read some of the other books by the same author, and that's how I got to Solitaire. Both books were nice to read, though I did like Radio Silence more, and I want t talk little bit about how they felt in comparison to each other. Minor spoilers for each book ahead

Radio Silence

This book was about 17 year old Frances Javier, who runs a blog where she frequently posts art of her favorite podcast: Universe City. The book starts off with Frances getting an invitation to become the official artist for that podcast, and she accepts. She later finds out that the creator of Universe City is her neighbor, Aled Last, and the two of them become fast friends. Like how I said earlier, I found Radio Silence because of a poster of someone advertising the book around the school, one of the things that drew me in was the mention of platonic male and female relationships. Aled and Frances have a wonderful relationship and seeing such a close platonic m/f friendship in media was so incredibly satisfying for me, especially after sitting through one too many useless romantic relationship subplots. The diversity in this book was also great, with Frances being mixed, her mother being British and her father being African. Seeing a black girl have such a close relationship with fandoms made me feel seen, being a black girl myself. And she's also queer which was!! even better. Aled is also on the asexual spectrum which made me almost scream while reading it because like, look me in the eye and name an canonically asexual character in fiction, now name two. Aled's family story is also incredibly painful and while I wont say much about it in the case that anyone still wants to read this book, reading the ending was so relieving. 

Solitaire

I'm going to be honest and say that I don't have as much to say about this book. I went in with high expectations thanks to Radio Silence and while I won't exactly say that I was disappointed by it, it did take me longer to fully get into it like I did for Radio Silence. Tori was a, for lack of a better word, interesting protagonist. I did start of the book thinking that she was a "not like other girls" protag, but after finishing reading it I really think she just needs therapy. One thing that surprised me was that Tori does end up in a romantic relationship by the end. After reading Radio Silence, I'm gonna be honest, I was hoping for another platonic relationship, and the book had the makings of staying platonic as well. But to be fair, the relationship did feel more like a Studio Ghibli-esque romance than a high school drama one, so I guess it could've been worse.

Over all I did enjoy both of these books quite a bit, and I would happily recommend them.