Blog Tour: The Wrong Kind of Weird by James Ramos

 

The Wrong Kind of Weird
James Ramos
On Sale Date: January 3, 2023
320 pages  

A high-energy YA contemporary love story, following multicultural geek and nerd club member Cameron Carson... and his secret relationship with school queen bee Karla Ortega.

Cameron Carson has a big senior-year secret. A secret with the power to break apart his friend group.

Cameron Carson, member of the multicultural Geeks and Nerds United (GANU) club, has been secretly hooking up with student council president, cheerleader, theater enthusiast, and all-around queen bee Karla Ortega since the summer. The one problem—what was meant to be a summer fling between coffee shop coworkers has now evolved into a clandestine school-year entanglement, where Karla isn’t intending on blending their friend groups anytime soon, or at all.

Enter Mackenzie Briggs, who isn’t afraid to be herself or wear her heart on her sleeve. When Cameron finds himself unexpectedly bonding with Mackenzie and repeatedly snubbed in public by Karla, he starts to wonder who he can truly consider a friend and who might have the potential to become more…

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What I thought about The Wrong Kind of Weird

I don't read a lot of YA but occasionally a blurb intrigues me.  I'm always on the lookout for something I can read with a family member and this looked very interesting in that respect, a good book to talk about some of the social things that tend to happen in high school.

Namely, high school popularity.  Seems like there is always a group that is at the top of the pecking order and goes out of their way to judge others according to that yardstick.  This book captures this perfectly with Cameron Carson's story.

Cameron is your average senior.  He's not the most popular, but he has his group of friends.  Others might call them nerds for their love of gaming and anime and all sorts of things that I wasn't familiar with having graduated many years ago, but that didn't matter.  It was easy to get the idea of the way the lines were drawn here.  The story is told in Cameron's point of view and I really liked that about this story.  I felt I really got to know him and his life through his eyes.  And I liked this character and his group of friends. I felt at home with them.

Things get interesting when he starts a secret relationship with Karla Ortega, one of the most popular girls in school at the same time he is developing a relationship with Mackenzie, the sister of Karla's back-and-forth-ex.  It's not as complicated as that sounds and again, I could recall things like this happening in high school, even at my ripe age. 

 

You just know it's going to blow up in his face at any moment, yet, he can't seem to extricate himself. He thinks about dumping Karla until she decides she wants them to lose their virginity together.  But he's really compatible with Mackenzie.  It's all so dramatic and realistic for the YA crowd. 

A class production of Pride and Prejudice becomes the backdrop for all this drama and I thought the author handled this is a very sweet way as unexpected relationships form.

While it's not a linear telling of the story and it jumps around a bit, I did enjoy Cameron and his friends and thought this story captured the drama that is high school.  We all know it. There is a diversity of characters that I really liked the most about this one.  Perfect for the YA reader and their friends as it makes for good discussion. Cute story, likeable characters.  A good reading experience -- I will be watching for future work from this author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 James Ramos (he/they) is a nonbinary, unapologetically dorky Minnesota native who now calls Arizona home. Weaned on a steady diet of science-fiction, comic books, and classic literature, James wrote his first story at eight years old and hasn’t stopped writing them since. He counts Jane Austen and Frank Herbert as his biggest literary influences, and believes in the unifying power of the written word. James is passionate about storytelling, particularly stories that give voice to marginalized people, especially those within the LGBTQ+ community and people of color. When he isn’t writing he can usually be found cosplaying with his friends or surrounded by his amazing family of cats.

 

SOCIAL LINKS:

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/thejamesramos

Twitter & Instagram: @thejamesramos