i adore them and the writing and lgtbqia books and that theres a second book and that this lived up to my expectations and that this made me cry and everything for a little while

You know what? If a book makes me laugh AND cry I think it deserves 5 stars. 

I am neither a teenager nor a boy, but this was a beautiful and engrossing story about family, friendship, hardships, self acceptance, trust, and love. 

I highly recommend listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda narration of the audio book. 

This book definitely holds impact, not just during its time of publication, but to present day. I received this book as part of a book swap, and I was stoked to dive into it! I liked how each character had their respective flaws that didn't make them unlikable. However, although I definitely picked up on the plot, I did not like some of the pacing. Nor was the writing style (consistent, short, blunt sentences) totally my speed. In fact, only when there was some kind of confession did the writing style change. 
Overall, this is a good book! But some of the pacing and writing didn't really help with engagement. 

Sometimes I'll read some YA book and think "you know, maybe this book wasn't meant for me at this age, maybe I could've enjoyed it when I was younger". This is not one of them :/
I feel like the author has some shit to unpack because afaik he 's part of both the communities portrayed in the book (mexican-american and gay), but the whole thing is plagued with cliches and stereotypes of what it means to be either and both. I don't usually get upset when I see my culture written slightly off because at least it might come from a place of either ignorant admiration, or outright malice. For this book though, I feel like Alire-Saenz is coming from a place that's trying to be admiring and respectful but because of whatever issues ends up projecting hatred and malice.
See, it's hard to tell if he's celebrating being of mexican descent because he's constantly using the "rapist, violent, gang-member, drug addict, macho" stereotype to both make a joke or advance the plot; most of those are completely unnecessary and (at least for me) not funny at all. And don't even get me started on the sexist jokes.
I also can't tell if the author's celebrating being gay and in love because bad things keep happening to people in the plot just because they're gay. Which is I understand, a reality for many of us, but the way it's handled here is clumsy if not malintentioned. Gayness it's used not as self-discovery but as a curse and a source of drama to keep the stakes high with no resolution. Not to mention that if I wanted to really rock the boat, I could make a case of how this whole book was queer-baiting and not LGBTQA+ rep because

Aristotle doesn't even get together with Dante until the last few pages (like the last 10 pages y'all), even though this is marketed as a gay coming-of-age or whatever. Well come out and come of age then, why don't you?!?

Very dissapointed by the conclusion of the book too, as the premise was that Ari was searching for the "secret" that would reveal what's "wrong" with him, and somehow he finds out that what was wrong with him was that he was gay. Sure, that's a healthy message.
Even if I were to ignore all of the above, the writing is objectively bad, dwelling on platitudes to land some quotable moments. I honestly felt that the characters were cut short from being fully distinct and even contradict themselves because the author wanted to keep them a blank canvas to make the reader project onto them. Recommend it to your toxic gay friends to make them worse, y'all.