Rating: 🤩

Hello yes, alert the (nonexistent) presses and all that, because I’ve found one of my new favorite books. Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly made me feel so many things and I cannot recommend it enough.

Quick synopsis

Valdin and Greta are siblings and roommates. Both queer, both in different stages of figuring out who they are, the story follows them (in POV alternating chapters) as they move through life in New Zealand.

This is so vague, I know. But it’s a very character-driven novel and I don’t want to give too much away, because there’s so much goodness in this book and while I want to wax poetic about it for hours on end, I also don’t want to spoil anyone’s experience of reading it. What I can say is: there’s a lot of humor and heart, and a large—very eccentric—cast of characters.

Ok back to the review

It would be all too easy to describe Greta & Valdin as a book carried simply by vibes—or even to describe it as only slice of life. (And to be fair, it has immaculate vibes and it was a slice of life I wanted to slip myself inside of.) But I feel like that would be doing it a disservice because it’s more than that.

While it’s admittedly hard to find a clear plot line while you’re in the midst of it, what with the alternating chapters and sometimes seemingly unconnected vignettes, when you view it as a whole at the end, it’s a really (like really) gorgeous story about love and family, and the myriad of ways they can exist. And along the way we get so many literal laugh out loud moments, really relatable struggles with queer identity, and also more really relatable fears of the future and anxiety about career and stability.

Regarding queer identity, one of my favorite lines from the book comes when Valdin is talking about his ex and how he had never been with a man before Valdin and Greta asks what he identified as. Valdin says:

"Nothing, he just avoided thinking about it. I think that's an issue with queer society. People still have trouble accepting anyone who isn't already in or aspiring to be in a same-sex relationship as a part of the community. Being queer is... it's in yourself, it doesn't always have to do with other people."

As a femme-presenting nonbinary bisexual person who’s married to a cis man and often feels a lot of feelings about my own connection to queerness, I felt that so hard. And while I know Valdin is fictional, I really wish I could be friends with him.

All in all, Greta & Valdin was easily one of the funniest books I’ve read all year, and also it made me literally sob (it’s not sad!! I just have a lot of feelings). It‘s definitely found a place in my top ten favorite books of all time. I acknowledge the character-driven nature of it might mean readers who prefer plot-forward books don’t connect with it as well, but even so I will never not recommend this book.