Please note that this is a review of a sequel, and will contain spoilers for the first book, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. The review will also assume prior knowledge of the plot of the first book.
I absolutely adored Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, so I was simultaneously thrilled and worried about the fact that Benjamin Alire Sáenz was writing a sequel. For one thing, the first book really felt like a complete work and didn’t really warrant a sequel, which I still believe to be true after having read the book. I don’t think that it added anything to the first book, and I think that if I were ever recommending the first book to anybody I would probably tell them not to read the sequel.
That said, when considered independently from the legacy of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World was a fairly good book in its own right, but definitely lacked a lot of the spirit of the first book.
The book picks up right where the last one left off, on the night where Ari and Dante first get together. My primary issue throughout the story is that the “and Dante” did not deserve to be in the title, because Dante played a very minor role in the story, which largely revolved around Ari’s character development and his relationships with basically everybody else in his life. Granted, the entire story could not happen without the character development he underwent in the previous book because of his friendship with Dante, but if you’re here for romance then you’re going to be disappointed.
I will say that Ari’s character really shines in this book; there is very little plot, so it’s basically just him evolving and coming into himself. I do love him more after having read this than I did in the first book. His friends, Gina and Susie, get a lot more development, and Cassandra, a new character, surpassed Dante as my second favorite character, and she was honestly the best part of the book for me. Ari’s parents were also fleshed out a lot more, which was interesting as well. Unfortunately, Dante really didn’t develop as a character at all, and overall was not given the sort of weight one would expect as a secondary protagonist.
If you love Ari’s reflective nature and the truths about the world that he is always attempting to grasp, you’re going to love this book, as it has even more of that than the first book does. I mean, you have to get through about 100 pages that are basically just him being horny most of the time first, but after that you’re in the clear and it reverts to a much more proportional amount of thinking-about-having-sex-with-Dante to thinking about everything else. There is very little plot; it is essentially completely character-driven, which does work in this case, though there are definitely sections that could have been cut out. Of the 516 pages in my edition, I would guess that at least a third of them could have been cut out with little-to-no impact on the book.
The book did feel completely superfluous; nothing about the first book warranted a sequel. Did I still enjoy the book and getting to see the characters again? Yes, but I don’t necessarily feel like this book added anything to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to everybody who loved the first book; it depends what aspects of it matter most to you.
Overall, I did thoroughly enjoy this book, particularly the middle 350-400 pages (both the beginning and ending left something to be desired). I love Ari, so getting to see him grow and come into himself over the course of his senior year was great, and I loved his developing relationships with his parents and friends, which were definitely the best aspect of the book. Ari’s relationship with Dante truly should have been much more of an emphasis than it was; Dante was honestly barely relevant, which doesn’t make sense considering the fact that he is one of the two title characters. I would definitely have wanted to see more about the pair of them figuring out how to be in a romantic relationship with each other, which is more what I was expecting this book to be about. However, I enjoyed the other aspects of the book enough that I’m giving it 4/5 stars.
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