“I could even be myself, if I ever figure out who that is.”


Now that I’m really thinking about it, there are two things that really bothered me about this book, and pulled it down from being a 4/5 or even a 4.5/5 book.

1- Was the fact that Michael spent the entire book being afraid of his father. He was so scared and preoccupied by the idea of coming out and getting kicked out just like his brother. He held on to the idea that he could fix his family. And then…he just….decided to come out to the entire school, just like Conner did, and…then we really didn’t get to see him actually do it himself with his parents. And then he was kicked out and he just sort of….moved on with his life. When that was his biggest fear and we didn’t have a resolution with his feelings, or even a concrete reaction. He just….moved on.

It felt like the version of the story of someone who never had to actually have that fear. And who never had it realized. It was glossed over, even though the majority of the book, when it came to Michael and his relationship with his dad, was built on that one idea. That he didn’t want to get kicked out, which is very understandable. And then when he was it was like…”well at least I still go to lunch with my mom once a week” like he was having a Bella Swan type mental moment over not having sex with a hot boy he wanted to have sex with….but his parents kicking him out was just a “lol guess that happened! So crazy!!”

2- This Book was both about the beginnings of the AIDS crisis in NYC in the early 80’s….and it wasn’t. It felt like it wanted, so desperately, to only have AIDS be a background thing. The two afterword essays, both mentioned how in the early 80’s when HIV/AIDS was first becoming the deadly disease that we know it as today, there was a bit of a worry but not a big one as no one really knew much. Which, as recent history serves, is very understandable. However, this book was both trying to have the epidemic be a background noise type thing, like the two afterwords mentioned, but it was also a central storyline. Every character talked about it for most of the book, and yet it was always treated as if it was just some random little thing. I’m sure it was really like that, and the author’s bio mentions that she worked for an organization and with people both of which worked in AIDS help. Yet, for the story she told, it just felt inconsistent and like it was her way of ‘educating the children’ while still wanting to tell a cute little coming-of-age story. It felt like an afterthought, or a late stage suggestion by a editor or early reader, almost.

So, when Michael decided not to have sex with Gabriel because of his pre-established fear and worry about catching something, that was fair. But the last page of the book he was just like….”well I’ma f**k this boy and if I get sick and die…uwu so crazy!!!” When that was the other big thing he was afraid of. His character was a third not wanting to get kicked out, a third not wanting to die of AIDS and a third being a teen and not knowing what the hell is happening in life.

And yet, two of those things just…went away without any sort of build up or character development. He just kind of went….¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to two issues he spent almost the entire book worrying over. It really makes him seem almost like he…wants to get the dieses or expects to? Which…isn’t what she was going for, I don’t think. But that’s the vibe the last page really gave off.

It truly was like the AIDS storyline wasn’t originally as big of a deal, but then someone mentioned maybe it should be because gays in NYC in the 80’s, so things were added in. Which might explain why almost 0 characters get any sort of resolution and almost 0 things are resolved at the end.

((Also, he was preoccupied a number of times about being a virgin and not having sex and the scene where he did have sex with that random boy was literally a paragraph and he moved on from it very quickly…even though he was in the middle of being sad that he didn’t have sex with Gabriel because he didn’t want to catch anything. For a boy who knew how to overthink and overanalyze literally everything…he sure did move on from having sex for the first time with a stranger, getting kicked out, and letting go of his fear of getting AIDS rather fast. It didn’t sit right with me.))

All of these things that he did and felt at the end, were and are probably things that people In 1983 might have felt. But it didn’t feel like the Michael from a few pages before the end would have done what Michael at the end did. It didn’t feel complete. And I understand that’s life, sometimes people just decide to do things differently then they always have. But this is a book and character development is a thing.

Out side of those two (or really three) things, I thought the characters were really well put together. Becky, James, Conner, and even Michael felt like we’ll rounded characters…for the most part. I do think James’ sudden move to London was a bit of a forced plot point especially with it happening out of the blue less then 10 pages from the end. When we could have gotten some sort of resolution with his character but…whatever.

The way the book itself was structured, in chunks that sometimes were scene continuations and sometimes weren’t, and without quotation marks for the dialogue, I thought were fun little stylistic choices. It was otherwise a 4-4.5/5 star book but those two character and plot choices at the end just really didn’t do it for me.

Especially knowing that this wasn’t an OwnVocies book, so it becomes yet another non-gay person writing a book about gay people that’s 1- set during the aids crisis and 2- features deeply traumatizing acts of homophobia enacted on all the books gay characters really doesn’t sit right with me. Both of which are already topics we don’t need anymore of, especially from non-gay writers.

But that’s a conversation for another time, me thinks.