Get It Together, Delilah! by Erin Gough is a charming lesbian young adult romance with a strong lead character who is self-assured but, more often than not, is her own worst enemy.

After her mother leaves them, Delilah Green encourages her father to take an extended vacation while she takes care of running the family owned diner, The Flywheel. When the situation at The Flywheel become more serious due to her lack of reliable employees and dwindling sales, Delilah decides to take time off from school in an effort to save the diner. Her choice to ditch school is an act of self-preservation since she has been the target of unrelenting bullies due to her sexuality. Delilah is, in many ways, a resilient and likable young woman but she stubbornly refuses to ask for help as the situation at the cafe worsens. Nor is she willing to give a concerned teacher/counselor the opportunity to help deal with the harassment from her classmates.

With her best friends busy with school, Delilah's friendship with her best guy pal Charlie McFarlane turns out to be the most reliable support during her trials and tribulations. While he is rather fickle when it comes to matters of the heart, he is unfailingly loyal and his irreverent charm and good nature is the perfect foil for Delilah's troubles. Charlie is also exceptionally skilled in the kitchen but he finds himself in a bit of trouble when he impulsively decides to pursue his latest love interest.

As if Delilah does enough problems in her life, she is the midst of a huge crush on flamenco dancer and uni student Rosa Barea. While she adores Rosa from afar for a good part of the novel, there are a few cringe worthy scenes where Delilah finds herself tongue-tied and clumsy when she has the opportunity to talk to the girl of her dreams. Although they do eventually make progress with their relationship, Delilah's impatience once again causes problems with her fledgling romance.

Get It Together, Delilah! is a light-hearted and entertaining young adult romance with a great cast of adorable characters. Although some parts of the plot are a tad bit unbelievable, Erin Gough does a wonderful job balancing the true to life issues such as bullying and homophobia with plenty of humor. Although the romance between Delilah and Rosa is just in the beginning stages by the novel's conclusion, it is easy to root for them as a couple. This part of the storyline could have been fleshed out just a little more and while Rosa's hesitance to go public with their romance is realistic, Delilah's reaction is completely understandable.

An imperfect but completely darling debut that fans of contemporary young adult novels will enjoy. ( )

I keep an LGBTQ+ Lending Library in my classroom and this was a welcome addition. I know that my students experience discovering, understanding, and sharting their sexuality diffierently, but I felt as though this book relied heavily on the negative. ( )

Review to come closer to publication date ( )

Delilah is seventeen and in her last year of high school in Australia. She's also stuck working endless hours in her father's cafe, the Flywheel, as he goes on a whirlwind world trip: hopefully to mend his broken heart. You see, Delilah's mother, June, left him for another man and moved away, leaving Delilah and her father (and the cafe) all alone. But suddenly Delilah finds herself seventeen and running the Flywheel solo. She has no time for school, homework, or even her friends. She barely even finds time to sneak glances across the street at the beautiful Rosa, whose family runs a nearby business. Delilah thinks Rosa is amazing, but she doesn't know how to tell her (and besides, the last time she fell for a girl, she was bullied endlessly at school). What can she do to get her life on track?

This novel has all the makings of a lovely little lesbian YA book. And, truly, many aspects of it are simply delightful. My biggest problem is that I could never get past the fact that Delilah's father left his seventeen-year-old daughter alone to oversee his business (supposedly it was left in the charge of Delilah and another employee, who is quickly removed via a car accident and visa issues). So much of the novel focuses on Delilah's plight of having to save the cafe: ordering the supplies and food, oversight of its finances, and even making major legal decisions in her father's stead. I just couldn't buy it. And she missed so much school; I get that the legal age for that choice is different in Australia than America, but it was very odd. Basically every parent in the novel was completely absent: it seemed really far-fetched. So did asking a "friend" to run the place day-after-day, or to look at the accounts, or make extensive determinations regarding the Flywheel's fate. Or perhaps I'm just a literalist who is no fun.

On the plus side, beyond the cafe aspects, Delilah is a sweet character, and it's always refreshing to see a lesbian protagonist in YA fiction. The portions of the novel where she is attempting to work out her sexuality are far more realistic. She is bullied at school (oh how I wish this didn't have to be a staple of teen fiction, because it no longer existed), which does contribute to her unwillingness to attend, and that I can understand. But she's a plucky heroine, and she definitely grows on you. Her cast of supporting characters is actually pretty slight, with a focus on her best friends Charlie and Lauren and her crush, Rosa. None of these are as fully developed as Delilah, but they are fairly interesting.

I would have enjoyed this novel more if its focus had been more on Delilah working through her sexuality and relationships versus so much of the Flywheel drama. Some of the scenes with Delilah and Rosa, or her other friends, are very poignant and spot on, and I quite enjoyed them. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel was a bit unrealistic and melodramatic and kept me from enjoying it fully. Still, it picked up at the end, and I did find myself rooting for these characters (and even the darn Flywheel). I also seem to be in the minority with my review, so don't let my feelings stop you from picking up the book.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher and LibraryThing (thank you!) in return for an unbiased review.

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An improbably story. Teenage Delilah sends her dad on an extended vacation...because he needs it. Dominic who is supposed to run the family cafe in dad's absence, runs a red light, is discovered to be an illegal alien and is deported. It falls on Delilah to run the cafe, despite her lack of any sort of ability to do so.

Outed at her school by a willing kissing partner, Delilah is a pariah at school. Meanwhile she has a crush on Rosa Borea, who dances at the restaurant across the street. Every night at 8 PM sharp, Delilah is staring out her bedroom window watching Rosa dance and dreaming of being with her.

Meanwhile the cafe is going to pot...failing miserably.

Get it Together Delilah is an OK story with OK characters. Nothing monumental here. ( )