I read the first Aristotle & Dante seven years ago right when I was starting college, and though I could see the appeal that made it an instant beloved classic, I remember I was in a very rough time when reading and that may have really diluted my enjoyment. My first boyfriend and I had our first fight that made me uncertain about our future after dating for six weeks, and I was turned down for something I worked really hard to obtain. Still, I always try my hardest to put everything with my life aside and be a proper blogger and treat every book I read with equal chance.
In the end, I gave A & D Discover The Secrets of the Universe two stars out of four but later upped it to a passing two and a half, and after being able to think about it for months and even years, my mixed reaction stemmed not from the rough things that happened with me at the time but from how a lot of its minuscule chapters felt like it was saying the same thing over and over again and dragging the entertainment factor, plus I didn’t feel much was truly happening, and finally I was disappointed it took till the very end for the two characters to start a relationship. It still did a good job at putting us in Aristotle’s shoes, of a dismissive loner who slowly learns to open himself up to affection. I also kept hearing about this sequel in the works for years, and knowing I would get more of this story, I was able to respect the book a lot more for what chapter in their story it was choosing to tell.
The long-awaited sequel, Dive Into The Waters Of The World, takes place right after Secrets of the Universe, when after a long crush Dante Quintana had with Aristotle Mendoza was quite unrequited, Ari has finally realized from the moment Dante offered at the local pool to teach him how to swim that he was in love with him. They have started a relationship, but this was back in the 80’s when the AIDS crisis was wiping so many innocent gay men out, not just from the disease but the indifference of the world towards their sickness, and it’s also a time where the amount of mainstream support we have now was practically nonexistent. There is at least enough compassion within Ari and Dante’s clique; their parents all support them, Ari’s close friends Gina and Susie do, as well as some new friends Ari is finding to be picking up. Yeah, Ari’s making new friends because being with Dante has helped him realize the joys of socializing, standing up for people, and opening himself up to do the right thing.
A bit like the predecessor, this next chapter in Ari’s and Dante’s lives doesn’t actually have a specific plot-line, other than them going about their final year of high school and navigating a relationship between the hardships of school, the broken people in their lives, and being closeted. And it’s a 500-paged coming-of-age story that would normally take about 300 to be told. I got the impression this book wasn’t being written to be sped through by readers; it was being written to give them a satisfying amount of time back with two characters who have been loved in the hearts of readers for the past decade. Saenz also retains his style of consistent short chapters, most of them about a grand gesture of the world around us. The result is that it’s charming…but kind of easy to put down.
A different LGBTQ+ book I recently read that had a similar story about growing up gay in an unloving environment was one of my favourites of last year. I gave it my highest grade. The reason I’m giving this similar book a smaller grade is its style of various themes – a bully turned friend, meeting a brother who’s been in prison for 12 years, potential universities, a tragedy – are all fine, most of them very good in fact, but the other book had a homophobic father and the wonder of how the near future will go, two intense main themes that anchor the book as a whole and make us feel it’s one full story rather than a series of short stories that aren’t very interconnected. You could say the main theme of this book is Ari coming out of his shell, but he had already come a long way since the first book, so the Ari at the beginning of this one book and the Ari at the end aren’t quite different enough to feel a big transition. But the relationship between him and Dante, and the fact this new Ari is so much happier now, are both adorably written enough to make me know only a very deep flaw would prevent me from recommending this book, and there wasn’t.
Mellow, somber, and thought-provoking about how much better we are as a world with LGBTQ+ people and how much intolerance we still have at the same time, the continuation of Ari and Dante’s story is a coming of age tale that will not be your quickest read, but should stick with you for a while. In the afterword, Saenz himself mentioned as time went on after the first Aristotle & Dante, he realized how much more there was to tell and he was displeased with the idea of letting the story run its course with one book. Glad to see he agreed with me, and most of us.
If you like this, I’d try Fifteen Hundred Miles from The Sun and the first Aristotle & Dante
William J. McGinn 
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