Review: By Your Side by Margherita Scialla

I came across By Your Side by Margherita Scialla on Instagram. A friend shared the ARC application post to their stories and I was immediately excited by the description it gave: a short story about a bisexual woman and her aromantic guy friend entering into a queerplatonic relationship. It’s something I’d never read before, and as someone who loosely falls under the bi and aro umbrellas … well, to say I was keen to get my hands on a copy would be an enormous understatement. However, the story itself wasn’t quite what I was anticipating, and unfortunately left me feeling a little dissatisfied.

The writing of By Your Side is good. It’s occasionally clunky in places, but has plenty of charm and multiple scenes that gave me the warm and squishies inside. I particularly loved an early scene in which Noah comforts Emma about her breakup by cuddling up to her on his bed. It reminded me a great deal of some of my own friendships and felt very real and tender. And Scialla knows how to build some great tension too, with the pivotal moment under the bleachers, where Emma sits listening to people badmouth her and the way she behaves around Noah, creating a sympathetic burning in my own gut. That scene will stick with me for a long time. I understood it and felt it down to my core.

As a story that is meant to be about a queerplatonic relationship, though, By Your Side gives almost no page time to that relationship. The majority of the book is taken up by Emma coming to terms with her breakup and her ex’s cheating. It then shifts to her deliberating about whether she wants something more with Noah (and her self-doubt regarding her behaviour around him), before finally ending in a conversation that starts the queerplatonic relationship between the pair.

I think the above is why By Your Side just didn’t hit the mark for me: we don’t get to see the relationship itself, we don’t get to see it tested, to feel it working, or to find out how both of these people who feel sexual attraction manage that aspect of themselves in this new territory. The story very much felt to me like it ended at the beginning of the most interesting part, and I can’t decide if that’s because it’s actually underdeveloped, or whether it’s just because it was marketed to me as being about the relationship, when it’s actually more of a platonic happily-ever-after kind of story. In short, I was after a book that modelled a different kind of queerness than we normally get on the page, and I feel like I only got the opening act.

That being said, I think if you’re looking for an uncomplicated, non-romantic HEA love story, this is probably a really great choice for you. It’s short, it’s sweet and it would probably hit that mark bang on. This wasn’t the book that I was craving, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that another person won’t find some absolute joy in its pages.

If you think By Your Side might be up your alley, you can grab it here.

Oh … and if anyone happens to know a book that fits more of what I wanted, please send the deets my way! (And if you’ve written that book and want me to review it, check out my review policy for details on how to get in touch.)