Been Here All Along: He's in Love with the Boy Next Door

Kyle and Gideon have been best friends since they were about the age of five. They have always been next-door neighbors and have created a close bond. Despite their opposite personalities; Kyle: basketball player/jock, Gideon: geek, brainiac they’ve become best of friends. Their friendship is one you’ll be envious of! This book primarily revolves around exploring sexuality and coming to terms with it. Kyle is bisexual and has been out to his family and close friends. However, he hasn’t told his girlfriend Ruby because he didn’t feel comfortable. He deals with finding ways to finally tell her this big secret. While, Gideon is exploring his sexuality and coming to terms with “being gay” when he starts developing feelings for Kyle. Sandy Hall is a writer who likes multiple POV. Similar to her sophomore novel, Signs Point to Yes this book focuses on the main characters, a sibling and Ruby - Kyle’s girlfriend. We get to know these other characters and see what they're struggling with as well as the boys. I enjoy the way Hall writes because she has fluffy Contemporary with a hint of dark/important topics. Been Here All Along includes a parent losing a job, surviving in the real world/life after college and a learning disability. I enjoyed these topics being implemented into the story because they are real life events and need to be seen in YA more! Adding a learning disability really hit me because it was relatable to my life and rare to see in YA books. Kyle and Ruby have a complicated relationship - there were times when it did feel toxic. Ruby isn't the nicest character and seems careless when it comes to others feelings. She gets jealous very quickly. However, she redeems herself in the end. This book takes a turn when Gideon and Ruby start acting strange which causes Kyle to become suspicious. It changes the story and the characters turn on each other. This really makes the story :) I loved Kyle and Gideon's story and how many strong messages were in this book. Gideon is a friend you'd love to have. He's super nerdy, kind and will force you to watch Lord of the Rings. Kyle is sweet and understanding, witty. I think this became one of my favorite Sandy Hall books since A Little Something Different. I highly recommend to pick up this LGBTQIA book inspired by a fan edition of You Belong With Me by Taylor Swift! Kyle and Gideon will quickly become your new OTP and you’ll ship them as hard as I did! I would read more of these boys in a heartbeat. I love them so much. Please pick this book up, it deserves to be read :)

Sandy Hall is one of those authors whose book's I happened to stumble upon in the store and impulse buy. I've been hooked ever since and Been Here All Along didn't disappoint. It was exactly what I needed to read to take a break from all the serious reads I've devoured this year. Been Here All Along can be summed up in five words; light, quick, cute, sweet, and heartwarming. But it also has undertones of a few things we all encounter in our lives; figuring out who we are, accepting who we are, and learning from our mistakes. I loved it. I'm in love with this author's writing style, the simplicity of it is beautiful. I love how she conveys so much with so little. It's refreshing and extremely different from what I usually read. The simplicity of the writing makes her books very character driven. Been Here All Along is told in the alternate perspectives of four different characters, which is something this author is known for doing in her books. I'm not usually a fan of books that have more than two perspectives but her books are always an exception to that. Gideon and Kyle. They've been best friends since they were five. In a way, they're complete opposites; Gideon is very organized and goal oriented while Kyle is very disorganized and forgetful, but they have an incredible friendship and a lot in common. That friendship slowly starts to morph into something more... And well you'll have to read it for yourself to find out what happens next. I loved their friendship. I loved the fact that they were both giant nerds. They were absolutely adorable together. I seriously can't get over how adorable they were!! Ruby, I didn't like. There is always that one character I don't care for and Ruby was that character in this. She was self-centered and had a bad attitude. I felt terrible for how her life was at home, I could relate to those struggles so much. However, I didn't feel that it excused her behavior. Toward the end, she seemed on the path to redemption but I couldn't get over how she acted for 90% of the book. Ezra, Gideon's older brother. He was there and extremely supportive of his brother, but I didn't feel like we really got to know him. I didn't form much of an opinion about him. I wish we had gotten to know him a bit better, but the fact that the main focus of the story was Gideon's and Kyle's journey it made sense that we didn't. Overall this was an enjoyable read. I did have a few moments where I found things a bit too perfect, thus unrealistic, and found certain dramas very eye roll worthy so it wasn't without small flaws. However, if you're looking for a quick, cute, and light contemporary then this book is perfect. If you've never read any of Sandy Hall's books but want to give them a chance then I highly recommend Been Here All Along! I can't wait to see what this author has in store for us with her future books. I, for one, will definitely be reading every book that is published.

I chose this book as part of a 30 Days of Pride Book Review project. This is that review: Gideon has been best friends with Kyle almost as long as he can remember. So when Kyle and his girlfriend are having a fight, Gideon really has to examine why he feels somewhat giddy. He’s definitely not attracted to Ruby… but could he really be attracted to Kyle? This is a lightweight, cutesy story about wanting a friendship to blossom into romance. The writing is simplistic. The conflict and eventual story arc is pretty obvious. The resolution is what one would expect. I mean, there is nothing too innovative or surprising happening here. Still, at the end of the day, it's a feel-good story. It delivers what the genre promises. It is a schmoopy teen romance. So, you get what you pay for here. The boys are good friends, and you want to root for them through the genre requisite misunderstandings and blunders. They also don't make the girlfriend character a throw away person whose feelings don't matter… or ultimately a monster so the audience doesn't have to feel so bad if her feelings get hurt…. Which I appreciated. All and all it was a quick and pleasant read. There were a few things that didn't quite do it for me, however. I didn't find the characters to be totally consistent from one scene to the next. For instance, in one scene Ruby is the point of view character and even in her internal monologue she is totally cool with the information she just learned. Than 3 days later she expresses that she is totally not okay with it. And while she could have simply changed her mind, I think we should have seen a glimmer of misgiving, while we were in her head, if she really felt so strongly about it later. And another instance was, in the beginning of the book Gideon has just no clue that his being gay was even a possibility. It catches him totally off guard to be attracted to a guy. Then much later in the book, someone asks him how long he's known he is gay, and he replies, “I guess I always sort of knew, but didn't know how to deal with it.” That was not at all what was expressed in his thoughts when we were in his point of view. It just feels like clumsy characterization. Also, the “up until right this moment I thought I was straight but I was secretly totally in gay denial this whole time” trope seems to just be over represented as a story device for straight authors writing gay stories. I don't know, and maybe I'm not being fair, because I'm not saying this never happens in real life, but.... and maybe this is just me... it can feel almost fetishy(?) sometimes. I've seen it too many times with fanfiction authors writing two characters who have been established heterosexual in canon, because those characters just don't know any better and really they are meant to be together. Do I recommend it? If you like schmoopy romances? If you like light manufactured drama that wraps up neatly, ala’ Degrassi or Teen Nick? If you really want a best friend hoping for romance story? Sure. Go ahead. Read this one. It is lightweight, Fluffy, Harmless faire. So how does it do on this project's scales? The Queer Counterculture Visibility Scale is first, which determines how much light I thought this book shed on less prominent queer stories. I liked that we had a POV character that identified as bisexual. I also liked that there were some class issues being pointed out by a non-queer POV character. A handful of points there. 2 out of 5 stars The second scale is The Genre Expectation scale, which rates how the book compares to other books in its genre. Like I said above, it is a fine example of the genre. Nothing too surprising but nothing too disappointing either. 3 out of 5 stars

This is a great book. It's a wonderful coming of age, coming out, gay love story. It's heart felt and endearing. The author writes wonderfully and captures an essence within the characters she creates that makes the reader want to keep reading and reading and not put the book down! This is one of the best coming of age love stories I've ever read. Unfortunately, this is the authors ONLY gay romance novel. Her other few novels concern only straight characters, and although they are probably well written and good stories, in a world dominated by heterosexual imagery depicted in every and all genre's, I'm only inclined to give my time to reading gay fiction.

I absolutely loved this book. I really like the whole coming out situation. At first I wasn’t sure about the whole in live with your best friend deal because there are so many books out there like that but it was totally different. I personally all the charters.

Even though this book is full of most all of the romantic teen boy "coming out" tropes and cliches, I found it to be a good bit more than satisfactory as a fun novel of YA romance. Yes, we [again] have to deal with two often clueless main characters, an embittered ex-girlfriend who got put aside in the coming out shuffle, the beloved and often wise older brother (actually he was a GREAT character), a couple of stereotypical jock bullies, endearing liberal parents and the almost obligatory drunk party scene with its TRUTH OR DARE game. We also encounter high school politics and cliques, the amazing straight girl buddy, a loving and clever younger sister, the very frustrating communication problems between the two guys, the ONLY SLIGHTLY "butcher" of the two boys insisting he's "bi," the occasional harmful pain caused by the craziness of social media, the ... oh well, you get the idea. If it has been done before, it's here again. (On the other hand, I AM obligated to add that - under the winking if not always watchful eye of big brother Ezra - the way Gideon and Kyle met as pre-schoolers WAS really neat and I DO think the meaningful learning disability sub-plot was truly something fresh to the coming-out "oeuvre)." Even so, all of it is well put together by Sandy Hall and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There IS lots of kissing and maybe "first base" making out but there's no sexual content so this would be suitable for even the youngest teen boys who might be in a "questioning" mindset and thereby a target 11-17 audience for few good books from this genre. Make no mistake however, adults, via this book, can enjoy revisiting their awkward teen years and first loves as well. 3 1/2 stars rounded up to four because I noticed few - if any - typographical errors.

I have loved each of Sandy Hall's novels. This one is just as charming as the previous two and I love that she went out of the norm and wrote about 2 boys in high school. The characters were lovable and flawed and her writing style is so easy and familiar, you feel like you right there experiencing it all. Can't wait for her next book.

This book is a very fun and entertaining read with all the charm that a gay young adult novel has. However the writing was not great and was borderline humorously bad at times. It felt very rushed and every aspect of it needed to be much more flushed out. Creating build up and suspense is so important in a romance, and this book has very little of it. Major events happen right after one another and are quickly glazed over. Being that there isn't a plethora of options to choose from, like there is with straight romance, I still recommend picking this up if you're into the genre or are a collector of gay YAs.

I could'nt put it down ! I loved it. I love how Sandy Hall talks about sexuality, and particularly bisexuality. This is a very cute book, with adorable characters. it's easy and simple to read, and funny. Loved it.

This book was a pretty predictable read but it was sweet and cute and everything it promised it would be.

I loved it! It was an easy read. It was super cute and amazing!

This is a beautiful book with a great story. I especially loved the characters. The story is narrated from the point of view of the four main characters and they feel so real: their thinking, dialog, word choice, personality... I immediately empathized with all of them. I only wished this book was longer.

Great coming of age book, loved how it changes from 4 different friends point of view while reading.