Blog Tour Review: Furious by Jamie Pacton & Becca Podos

Jenny (jenjenreviews)

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A coming-of-age sapphic romance with a bit of mystery

Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond Tours, Jamie Pacton, and Becca Podos for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary eCopy and media kit!

Book Information

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publishing Date: June 11, 2024

After years racing go-karts and looking up to her mother, a celebrity Formula 1 racer, Jojo Emerson-Boyd should be starting her own racing career. But when she loses her mom in a tragic crash, Jojo’s future comes to a screeching halt. Now her dad won’t let her get a license, much less race. Instead, she’s stuck working at her grandmother’s mechanic shop in the sleepy small town of Dell’s Hollow.

But Jojo’s heart quickens when Motorcyle Girl Eliana “El” Blum shows up at the shop. El grew up on the motocross circuit sidelines, watching her sister and idol Maxine compete. When El mysteriously loses all contact with Max, she’s determined to find her, with her first clue leading straight to the mechanic shop, and to Jojo.

United by fate, the two quickly bond over Mario Kart showdowns and the Fast & Furious films. As their friendship shifts into something more, they’ll have to confront both their growing romance and the grief woven into their complicated families if they hope to chase down their dreams and make it across the finish line.

Content Warning: death of a parent, grief, trauma

Book Links

About the Authors

Jamie Pacton is a bestselling, award-winning Young Adult and Middle Grade author who lives in Wisconsin with her family. Her YA contemporary books include Furious, Lucky Girl and The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly. Her YA fantasy novels include, The Absinthe Underground and The Vermilion Emporium. Her adult fantasy romance debut, Homegrown Magic, is forthcoming from Del Rey in 2025.

Author Links:

Becca Podos’ debut novel, The Mystery of Hollow Places (Balzer + Bray), was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a B&N Best YA Book of 2016. Her second book, Like Water (Balzer + Bray), won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Children’s and Young Adult. From Dust, a Flame (Balzer + Bray) was her latest release. Her next novel, FURIOUS, a contemporary YA romance co-written with Jamie Pacton, will be published by Page Street YA in June of 2024; their adult fantasy debut, HOMEGROWN MAGIC, will be published by Del Rey in 2025. Rebecca is an agent at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston by day.

Author Links:

Review (no spoilers)

If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the tour, you can find the tour schedule here.

Hello all! I’m back with another review, but I’m somehow still sick after a week and a half, so that’s not great.

Furious is a book that’s honestly got a whole mixture of plots. At the heart of the book we have two queer teenage girls who start a summer romance with each other and learn more about their friends/family and themselves along the way. Mixed into this little love story we also have a subplot about racing (the book name is a play on the Fast & Furious franchise) and a subplot about finding a missing family member.

I thought this book did a good job at showing character growth between our two main leads. They start off the book being very sure of themselves and their perceptions of others, even when they don’t have the full picture, but by the end of the book, they have their eyes opened to the (sometimes harsh) reality that they live in. Through their journey they find out more about what it means to love someone (familial, romantic, and platonic) through thick and thin and just how badly their parents and friends are trying to protect them in their own ways.

That being said, there were many instances where I was a bit confused about the pacing of the book. While I enjoyed the different subplots that were included, I felt like none of them got as much page-time as they deserved. The race, for instance, had all this emotional weight being incorporated into the premise, but then happened in the span of like 1-2 pages with no real description of the event. The first 60% or so of the book felt more like telling than showing, with the last 40% doing a much better job at giving me the detailed descriptions and conversations that I wanted.

Overall, this was a cute coming-of-age sapphic contemporary romance novel with flawed but lovable characters.

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