There is a great amount of pain in leaving the place you grew up in because you aren't sure all of you could ever fit there. This book talks about the pain of leaving, the pain of being left behind, the joy of finding your people but the ache of everything you had to leave behind. What did you have to do to survive, and how could your life have been different if you hadn't had to have made those choices?

Overall, I think this speaks to the deep pain of rural queer kids really well. The main character left his home town to find his place and his people while his best friend stayed behind and made room for himself and his people there. They spend the book trying to reconcile the hurt they both left behind in each other and figuring out how to move forward.

There were a few places I felt the pacing was slow or the descriptions too long and got pulled out of the book a little bit. The main character is super messy, but aren't we all? Those are really the only marks against it I could find. Other than that, this is definitely a trans book I will be recommending.