Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.

Darius The Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram picks up a few months after Darius’ family has returned from their trip to Iran in Darius The Great Is Not Okay. Darius’ life has done complete one-eighty; he’s on the soccer team (which I kept wanting him to call “non-American football” but he didn’t), he’s got a haircut, a new job and a boyfriend.

This, like the first book, isn’t a plot-driven book, but more a coming of age story. While things have changed for Darius, things are still largely the same; Darius still loves tea, still wants to be a good big brother to Laleh and still struggles with depression.

And Darius has a lot on is mind: Landon, his boyfriend, wants to have sex, but Darius isn’t sure he’s ready, his parents are overworked and struggling to keep the family afloat, his sister is having a hard time at school, Darius gets to know a new side of Chip but is still close with Trent Bolger, who is a bully who keeps calling Darius homophobic slurs, in Iran, Darius’ grandfather is dying and things with Sohrab are uncertain.

It doesn’t feel like that much happens as you read the book, but in hindsight you realise it packs in quite a lot.

After having spent the family savings on the trip to Iran, Darius’ parents are struggling financially and working more than before. This means that the kids are falling through the cracks of everyday life, just like Darius’ father as his mental health declines. Darius’ paternal grandparents are called in to help with daily life and that gives Darius a chance to get to know more about the only other LGBTQ+ members of his family.

There’s a lot still in this book that doesn’t get unpacked, such as Darius’ father’s relationship with his own parents, but I did love that Darius coming out to his Iranian grandmother was met with acceptance and love.

The voice of the teenager grappling with growing up is still growing strong, a lot of mental energy is spent on thinking about bodies and sex and relationships. The confusion and developing sexuality is well written. It feels honest, like the disgust Darius feels at himself when he feels betrayed by his body, that frustration when he feels like it doesn’t even matter who he’s attracted to, his body has a mind of its own.

I do wish the guys Darius fancied weren’t so physically perfect.

It just makes it feel like it’s perpetuating the pervasive body image issues and toxic thoughts about self-worth experienced by bi and gay men.

Open an app like Grindr and you’ll be greeted with body-shaming phrases so familiar and cliched that straight people know about them, too. “No fats, no femmes.” “Gym-fit only.” “I work out and you should too.” Over the years, we’ve all heard that trite line: “You can be straight thin, but gay fat.”

— Nick Levine, “Why Body Image Issues Pervade the Gay Community”

If you’re wondering what “straight thin but gay fat means”, it’s a term that has become pervasive in the gay community. Whether on TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat, this term has made itself almost a motto of the beauty standards in the gay community. The term refers to someone who would be considered thin in most of society but fat within the gay community.

Pressure around appearance isn’t exclusively effecting the LGBTQ+ community, but it’s yet another thing piled on top of being a part of a marginalised group. Agenda-setting gay men’s magazine Attitude conducted a body survey in 2017, and found that 84% of respondents said they felt under “intense pressure” to have a so-called “good body.”

I understand that having him be attracted to classically good-looking, fit boys is setting Darius up for personal insecurities, as he’s still getting comfortable with his own body. And even if we’re seeing this “perfection” through Darius’ eyes, I still wish they would have been less poster boyish. The book doesn’t directly address body image issues for Darius as a queer boy, so I’m not going to assume that’s what caused this juxtaposition.

As to Darius’ relationship with Landon, it felt like a set up.

Landon was too perfect, so an obvious twist is for them to break up. It echoed the platonic third-act breakup with Sohrab in the first book, which also felt contrived — and which almost feels like it’s repeated in this book, though not quite.

The consent conversation between Landon and Darius was nice (that it existed), but I can’t help but feel that Landon saying, “sex is important to me in a relationship” completely negates the fact that sex in a relationship doesn’t have to mean penetrative sex or even sex with Darius if he’s not ready.

Sex doesn’t exist on a scale of nothing to penetration, there’s a whole world of activities that fall under this umbrella, and framing it like this stinks of the very heteronormative penetrative sex as the standard. While I acknowledge that the cultural celebration of heterosexuality as the accepted standard dominates major social institutions and permeates cultural sexual messages, I feel like this was a great opportunity to add a new perspective to this cultural narrative.

Landon, as a plot device, was not even necessary for Darius to get together with Chip. He could just as well have been single, his growing attraction towards Chip the only necessary drive to get into conflict with both Chip and Trent, which had already been set up in the first book. Chip and Darius could have even gotten together early in the book and then spent the rest of the time navigating their relationship among all these external factors, which would have made for a very interesting read and would have felt realistic.

I just don’t understand why Darius deserving better has to come at the expense of such a perfect boyfriend. And I get they’re teenagers, and those conversations and concepts around sex and relationships are going to be fuzzy, but I have to wonder about the repercussions of depicting it like this in media.

As it stands, that conversation and Darius’ “refusal” to have sex feels like this is going to be the reason they break up, and I don’t like what that says about not wanting to have sex/penetrative sex in a relationship—let alone being asexual.

—my reading notes

In other areas of LGBTQ+ rep the book does better:

  • Darius using gender neutral pronouns for people whose gender identity he is unaware of
  • Darius calling out homophobia in friendship: just because someone has a queer friend, doesn’t mean they can’t be homophobic
  • Darius’ LGBTQ+ grandparents showing up and eventually finding common ground with Darius for a future relationship, bridging that generational gap in both the family and the queer community

Did I enjoy it?

Despite it being more meandering than the first book, I still enjoyed it.

The relationship development with his father takes a great turn. In Iran, Darius had rediscovered a lost relationship with his father, and I love how that continues to develop through the second book. It feels like Darius’ past experience really opened up his eyes and allowed him to see things with more mature eyes, and in the end, it’s heart-warming how Darius is the one who comes to his father’s rescue when things are sliding downhill fast.

Darius’ non-American football teammates also have his back and are super supportive when Darius introduces his boyfriend and shows up wearing nail polish. Men-only team sports are filled to the brim with toxic masculinity and thrive on homophobia, so to see Darius thrive in his circle of friends made me happy.

I also love Darius’ relationship with Laleh, the relationship is changing and growing, from how it was easy to be a big brother while Laleh was little, and now having to deal with her going into the world on her own, and balancing all that with his own life and body changing in ways that don’t always feel in his control, felt very real.

The random, excessive details are still there in Darius’ inner monologue, which I love. It makes his anxiety, depression and overthinking very real. Darius is also under quite a lot of pressure as he’s dealing with everyone’s expectations.

Especially within his own family, communication isn’t a strong point. The adults are often very evasive until pushed into a conversation, making them seem inattentive. In the second book, there’s a stronger case for it as they get busy with work and stress over finances, but this was already established as a long-standing issue in book one.

Rapid-fire round:

  • Did the book meet your expectations? Yes, it carries on in the tone set by the first book, though it still feels like there might be more to come.
  • Who was your favourite character in the book and why? I liked Laleh this time, I appreciate that she wasn’t just passive cardboard cutout, but had issues of her own.
  • Who was your least favourite character in the book and why? Maybe that Landon existed?
  • Did you relate to any of the characters? Not a character per se, but the challenge of being a teenager hit home.
  • What themes or messages did you take away from the book? I love that his sports team was so supportive.
  • Was there anything in the book that surprised you or that you didn’t expect? There was very little of Sohrab considering that his situation was very dire. Again, potentially setting up for future books.
  • What did you think of the ending of the book? I’m lukewarm on this one, I think it could have been more satisfying if Darius and Chip had been dating for most of the book. I do love how things ended with the grandmothers.
  • What do you think the author’s intention was with the book? What message or theme do you think they were trying to convey? It’s hard to bring LGBTQ+ rep when you yourself are a queer person in a world with very heteronormative standards. The intention is good, yet I wish there would have been a bit more interrogation of the narrative on the basic assumptions of relationship dynamics.
  • Which part of the book did you find most memorable? When I think of this book I think of Darius and Landon, and then I immediately think of how disposable Landon felt, going from too mature to incredibly petulant.
  • Did you find any aspects of the book confusing or unclear? I don’t understand why Landon was necessary.
  • Were there any moments in the book that made you emotional or had a strong impact on you? When Darius’ grandmothers finally agree to possibly maybe make Pride plans with him. It was a heart-warming ending.