Blog Tour Review: It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland

Jenny (jenjenreviews)

Rating: 3 out of 5.

A book that explores what friendship means along with the importance of boundaries and communication.

Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond and Miel Moreland for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary digital copy and media kit!

Book Information

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Publishing Date: May 18, 2021

In Miel Moreland’s heartfelt young adult debut, It Goes Like This, four queer teens realize that sometimes you have to risk hitting repeat on heartbreak.

Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph used to think their friendship was unbreakable. After all, they’ve been though a lot together, including the astronomical rise of Moonlight Overthrow, the world-famous queer pop band they formed in middle school, never expecting to headline anything bigger than the county fair.

But after a sudden falling out leads to the dissolution of the teens’ band, their friendship, and Eva and Celeste’s starry-eyed romance, nothing is the same. Gina and Celeste step further into the spotlight, Steph disappears completely, and Eva, heartbroken, takes refuge as a songwriter and secret online fangirl…of her own band. That is, until a storm devastates their hometown, bringing the four ex-best-friends back together. As they prepare for one last show, they’ll discover whether growing up always means growing apart. 

Purchase/Information Links:

Content and Trigger Warnings

For a list of warnings, tropes, and representation for this book, check out its page on BookTriggerWarnings.com.

About the Author

Miel Moreland writes character-driven contemporary Young Adult novels. Born and raised in Minneapolis, she has a Midwestern heart but wandering feet. When not making pop music references and celebrating fandom, she is likely to be found drinking hot chocolate and making spreadsheets. She currently resides in Boston. 

Review (no spoilers)

This is my first tour with TBR and Beyond, so I hope I’m doing everything correctly! If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the tour, you can find the tour schedule here.

It Goes Like This is a young adult contemporary novel about four ex-bandmates. After experiencing an extremely messy breakup of their band, Moonlight Overthrow, Eva, Celeste, Gina, and Steph find themselves suddenly reuniting in order to put together a one time reunion benefit concert.

The premise of this book caught my attention immediately. Not only is it interesting, but it’s also a very fresh take for a YA contemporary. In most contemporary novels, the best friends start off together and a conflict breaks them apart in the middle of the novel. In It Goes Like This, the initial conflict has already happened before the primary timeline begins, and you learn more and more about it through a series of flashbacks.

My favorite thing about It Goes Like This was that for a book with an all-queer cast, there was not a lot of time spent on LGBT discrimination. As a pansexual who often uses reading as an escape, I’m always a bit nervous about how in depth these conversations are going to go. There are some brief conversations/reflections about it (the most being the exploration of Steph’s non-binary identity), but the main and secondary characters of the book are extremely supportive and protective of each other, even despite their rocky relationships.

This brings me to why I rated the book 3 stars. While I was extremely grateful for the unconditional underlying camaraderie between these four characters, I had a hard time liking any of them individually. Miscommunication/Lack of communication is one of my least favorite tropes, and this book relies on it very heavily. The more they continued to randomly lash out at each other, the more frustrated I found myself getting. There was clearly a lot of unresolved issues between them, but I had hoped that their past mistakes would have taught them what not to do this time around.

Another thing that I discovered as I read this was that I think it would have been easier for me to read if it were written in first-person instead. Each chapter focuses on a different character, but all of them are written in third-person and more than once I found myself confused as to what was happening. For a book thats main emphasis is on relationships, I think it could benefit a lot from first-person narration. Please note, however, that the version I read was an ARC, so the final publication will probably resolve these issues.

Overall, I’d definitely recommend It Goes Like This if you’re looking for a queer contemporary that explores the importance of self-image, friendship, and family.

One thought on “Blog Tour Review: It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland”

  1. Pingback: TOUR SCHEDULE: It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland – TBR and Beyond Tours

Leave a comment