HIM (NSFW)

by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

Jamie Canning and Ryan Wesley are both star NCAA hockey players about to graduate and go pro when they meet at the Frozen Four. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since they graduated Elites hockey camp after six years of being best friends, only for Wes to torpedo their friendship over what Jamie saw as just some drunken idiocy and Wes saw as a selfish plan to manipulate the man he loved into bed with him.

Seeing Jamie again is like a hit of a drug Wes had been clean of for four years, and he can’t go back to being sober. So he signs up to join Jamie coaching at Elites over the summer and everything changes.

THIS IS ADULT EROTICA. You have been warned. Other CW include homophobia, hockey-typical misogyny, failure to pass the Bechdel test, and possibly a slight degree of difficulty with suspension of disbelief, depending on how much you know about hockey.

But it's so good. I listened to the Audible version in as close to one sitting as I could manage, and promptly bought the sequel on Kindle. It's very much like an E-rated Check, Please! fanfic, complete with porn with plot, the phrase "toed into my shoes", and friends to lovers. So much so that I had to carefully examine the personalities of Jamie and Wes for traces of the CP main characters, but there's insufficient anxiety. :p

Buy it on Kobo using this link to sign up for Kobo and you can support a gay bookstore with your purchase!

5/5

An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens

by Foz Meadows

Okay, screw that, this is my favorite author now. I found Foz through her fanfiction, which quickly became my favorite thing to read over and over, so much so that I recorded it so I could also reread it in the car and while falling asleep. And then she turned out to write published books, and goddamn her worldbuilding is amazing.

There's plenty more to read, but I started with An Accident of Stars and its sequel: Saffron makes a snap decision and jumps through a hole in reality, only to end up in Kena, where magic is real, long hair is political, marriages are polyamorous, and a political plot to depose the king ties together a frightened queen with a temper, a feisty apprentice with the key to salvation, and the weary worldwalker who put the king on the throne in the first place. Furthermore, it's linguistics geek wank and has a trans girl as the love interest.

I have the privilege of being friends with her on Discord, and she's a lovely person and also genderqueer.

Gives Light

by Rose Christo

I have a new favorite author.
Skylar hasn't had a voice since he was seven. That was when a murderer entered his house, killed his mother, and failed to kill him, the incident that lead Sky to be raised off the reservation, away from his family, alone except for his father. But when his father disappears and Sky is placed with his grandmother, he befriends the son of the man who killed his mother and nothing will ever be the same again. This is a delicate weaving of morality vs legality, of sweet romance against the odds, of two lonely boys finding a home, of speaking without a voice.
Gives Light effortlessly evokes empathy for Native people and teaches the truth about the way the government treats them without ever feeling forced. It's not a history lesson, it's simply an irrevocable part of living on an Indian reservation, and of being a foster child. There's minimal angst derived from the relationship; it's mostly them against the world, against unjust laws, clinging to their family and sorting out complicated emotions.
I only heard of Rose Christo because she wrote the infamous My Immortal, but I'm so glad I did, because the Gives Light series goes up there with Matthew J. Metzger books. Yes, it's a series: the first of six. I read all of them within three days total. They're just that good.

Merry Christmas!

       I think I've managed to write SOMETHING every day except Christmas Eve (which was a travel day), though I don't feel like I've gotten very far. We're nearly to the actual coming out to Jimena part.
I finished a book I'd been working on that I bought way back in November: Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld. Honestly, I don't have the energy to review it properly, and I don't feel guilty about that because it's not queer fiction, and it has no trans characters whatsoever. However, what it does have is a queer main character and a plot that does not revolve around her queerness. It raises the tension, as it would by virtue of our society, without *being* the tension. And my favorite part about that? The inside flap mentions nothing about the love interest being a woman--it merely says "falling in love--with another writer." And it is that fact that is most important to the plot. Imogen being a writer provides far more tension than Imogen being a woman. Thus Westerfeld, and whoever writes his jacket copy if it's not also Westerfeld, puts another brick in the process of normative-ization. TW for pyromania, possible cultural appropriation (they actually talk about the lines of cultural appropriation!) death, terrorism, serial killers, murder, ghosts, degradation plot (character goes from innocent to murderous).
        It's written as two books in one--Darcy writes the words, as the cover says, and Lizzie lives them. Between that and listening to my mother talk about the new book by David Mitchell, who wrote Cloud Atlas, I had an idea for a story that follows four characters, each of whom is directly impacted by the same fifth character in very different ways. They each paint a different picture of him based on their own experience--one falls in love, one is terrified, etc.
       I've been playing along with ideas from this website: mogai-archive.tumblr.com. It lists tons of words for genders, orientations, and pronouns. I have a vague 'verse in my head about a people who are not sexually dimorphous (there's only one basic body type, and the variation is in the little details) and use all of the words for gender and all of the pronouns. I also want to write about characters with flower genders. I've been attempting to find a word that describes my gender, and I think I'm going to just combine two and say I'm subgirlfluid. Subgirl is 3/4 agender and 1/4 girl. Subboy is the same but 1/4 boy instead of girl. Subfluid holds the agender part constant and the 1/4 part goes between girl and boy. I don't *quite* like subfluid because I want to emphasize the girl side of the fluidity--the boy side only occasionally crops up and doesn't feel as much a part of me.
      Exciting news, or perhaps not so much, for my readers: I got for Christmas two of the research books I'd not been able to get ahold of. One is Passing Lines, which is about sexuality and immigration, and the other is another fiction book, Freakboy.
      I also got some of Jonathan Friesen's books for Christmas. He was my old writing teacher. If his style has evolved any closer to mine, which it looks like it has based on the fact his latest romance is with a boy with DID, perhaps I should look into his publisher? Never pass up a chance to name-drop network.

Luna

By Julie Anne Peters

Regan can't get out from under the shadow of her older brother. At school, her teachers expect her to be as brilliant as Liam is. And everything else in her life is impacted by the fact that Liam is transgender, and Regan is his only support system. Regan loves her brother, and so she lets him use her room at night to dress up, put on makeup, and become his real self: Luna, a confident drama queen obsessed with her looks. But the pressure of the closet is getting to Liam, and Regan becomes his bodyguard and moral support as he begins to let Luna out in public. Regan really does love her brother. But the pressure of lying aroun
d the secret of Luna to everyone is messing up her relationships with her parents, her friends, and the cute new guy at school, and something has to change.

I didn't like Regan's way of thinking of Luna and Liam as two separate people with separate pronouns, but it kind of makes sense in character. Otherwise, the plot was enthralling and unpredictable, and Regan's stress over juggling all the lies is treated as valid but not less important than Liam/Luna's struggle with dysphoria. It's an angle not usually seen, but important not just for trans stories, but all forms of queerness and also mental illness. When you lean on one person for your whole support system, and they can't talk to anyone else about it, it takes a toll on them. It's safer and healthier for both of you if you can develop a wider support network, so you don't have to worry about slipping through the grasp of any one person, and they feel like they have the ability to say "Not today."

Overall rating: 4/5.

Project upshot: It's an important angle to keep in mind for the story. How is Jimena taking all this?

Vivaldi in the Dark (and sequels)

by Matthew J. Metzger

This one has absolutely nothing to do with trans* topics, but includes gay, bisexual, asexual, and experimenting characters, and these books are wonderful, and Matt deserves some free publicity, so you're getting a review anyway.

Vivaldi in the Dark, The Devil's Trill Sonata, and Rhapsody on a Theme are a trilogy exploring Jayden and Darren throughout the course of their relationship. So as to avoid spoilers, I'll only summarize the first one. When Jayden discovers a wild-haired, blunt boy practicing Vivaldi, he doesn't expect the prodigy to become his defender against schoolyard bullies. He doesn't expect to fall head-over-heels with Darren and his violin playing. But what he absolutely never imagined is that Darren struggles with severe depression that will impact Jayden's whole life if they pursue a relationship. Trigger warnings over the course of the trilogy include depression, panic attacks, self-harm, suicide, violence by mugging, car accidents, and poor reactions to medication.

They're beautifully contrasting characters. Darren is brusk, lacking a brain-to-mouth filter and rarely willing to talk about feelings. His father pressures him daily to become ever better at the violin, never listening to Darren, who doesn't want to go into music. Jayden is naive by comparison, despite being out at school as gay. His parents love him completely and constantly have his back as he struggles to understand Darren. Jayden falls in love with Darren for his violin playing, but it grows into something much stronger and much more powerful. Jayden's optimism combined with Darren's bluntness keeps a reader hooked and waiting to find out if love will conquer all...if it even can.
 Matt's books, especially Rhapsody on a Theme, have a tendency to start in odd places, and definitely eschew the traditional plotline of coming to a climax that the characters got themselves into and then ending. In multiple places, events happen that are completely random and out of the characters' control. The effect this has, though, is to keep us constantly guessing and unsure what the consequences will be. Especially in RoaT, he removes the surety of 'well, we're twenty pages from the end, this is definitely the climax' and that removes the surety that things will turn out a certain way. Matt tackles challenges like convincingly emotionally aging characters, writing from two points of view in two different places, and realistically describing the struggle with mental illness like a pro. The writing gets ever better throughout the trilogy. I have only two complaints with the whole series.  Jayden thinks Darren's violin playing worsens his depression, and I never noticed a connection...could have been me being oblivious, though. And Darren comes to completely rely on Jayden, saying, essentially, that he can't live without him, and nobody comments on how a relationship can't be healthy if one partner feels they can't leave the relationship--whether they want to or not, it's still trapping them. I'm willing to forgive it this, because it is a romance, as long as I can register with y'all that you should never feel like you cannot survive losing any given person, and that if you do, you're not in a healthy or stable place with yourself or with the other person.

Overall rating:
Vivaldi in the Dark: 4/5
The Devil's Trill Sonata: 5/5
Rhapsody on a Theme: 5/5

Project upshot: Absolutely nothing, but you should read them anyway and buy copies for all your friends.

I'm here!

Ladies, gentlemen, and those who do not fall into either category, I have arrived! I finished City of Refuge on the way here.

City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
This story follows two men and their families living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. SJ Williams lost his wife many years ago, but is more active in the lives of his troubled sister Lucy and her son Wesley than his daughter, who is married with children in North Carolina. Craig Donaldson loves everything about New Orleans, but the insistence of his wife, Alice, that the crime-filled city is not where they should be raising their children, Annie and Malcolm, is filling their family life with unbearable tension. When the hurricane hits, the Williamses stay put, figuring this storm can't be any worse than the ones they have this time every year--advice to evacuate is hardly new to a resident of New Orleans, and many of them don't have the money to leave town every year. Their house floods, and before they know it, the Williamses are scattered across the country. The Donaldsons manage to find their way out, and hole up in Chicago when it becomes clear that the city won't be safe to live in for a while, but Alice's ideas about moving, previously only ideas, suddenly become serious possibilities, and familial tensions skyrocket as Craig mourns the losses of his city. The two families are tied only by a lemonade, a photograph, and a deep, enduring love of the city they call home.

Artfully handled. It didn't completely enthrall me (I can only read about devastation for so long at a time), but it did pull me forward, making me want to know what happens, what the families decide. Piazza's narration dips at turns close to the action, following the movements of not only SJ and Craig, but Alice, Lucy, and Wesley as well, and then out again, showing the city as a whole, giving us the picture that no individual perspective can. It handles race and class differences well, showing us the differences between the experiences of white, middle-class Craig and black, working-class SJ without shoving it down our throats. 4.5/5

I mentioned in my review of A Change of Climate that I'd been to Norwich, England before. The reason is that my best friend, whose pseudonym has always been Lily, lives there. What was an amusing coincidence is now almost breathtaking. Although I've never been to New Orleans, Atalanta has family there, and considers it her city. It's actually more appropriate than if the book had been about her current hometown. New Orleans and Norwich are worlds apart, one undoubtedly American in spirit, one quintessentially British. What could possibly unite them? My workshop leader, apparently. And me. Lily and Atalanta are my two anchors, and I cannot give them enough credit for how they have affected my life. It feels like a sign, these being the two books that were assigned to me.

So, I feel like I should give a short explanation of what you're going to be seeing here for the next few days. This conference allows participants to workshop fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. There are two authors here for fiction, and one each for creative nonfiction and poetry. Each author will give a craft talk, a reading, and a lecture. These will be interspersed throughout the week alongside roundtables on publishing and time in our individual workshops. I need to write 200 words on each event except the workshops, which I will likely post here. I'm also planning on taking plenty of notes at the workshops and quotes if they crop up (they probably will). The course guide also says I need to turn in my original submission and the revised version, but this being a novel course and designed to work on the whole piece, we only had to turn in submissions in order to gain access to the conference (prove our worth, as it were.) I, as a returning author, submitted nothing. Furthermore, it says we need to turn in written responses to the submissions in our packet. This being the novel course, we got no packet! So we'll see if there's a substitute for that. There's also a ten-page reflection paper due next month.

Reading checklist:
Actually assigned:

• A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
• City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
• 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
• "The Progress of Love" by Alice Munro
• http://www.darcypattison.com/revision/opening-lines/ 

Not actually assigned:

• Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora by Lawrence La-Fountain-Stokes
• Sirena Selena vestida de pena by Mayra Santos-Febres and Debra Ann Castillo
• Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men by Lori B. Girshick and Jamison Green
• Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man by Chaz Bono
• The Lives of Transgender People by Brett Genny Beemyn and Susan R. Rankin  

Other random things:
The alpha mother sent me a bunch of links, this is my self-reminder to look through them all!

One week out

Technically, a day less than a week--the conference starts on the 6th. Woo-hoo!
Sorry for having been absent. It was a combination of being extremely busy (just not used to a 9-5 job), extremely tired (and a job for extroverts at that), and not actually having anything to write about--I've been focusing on the books I actually need to read for the conference and saving the others for if I have time, and one of the books assigned took me forever to get through out of sheer boredom. As it's not queer art, I'm not giving it a formal review, but finally finishing it felt like a good place to update.


A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
This is a book about the illusion of safety and how the long-ago past still affects our present. It jumps back and forth between present day, where Ralph manages a social work trust and his wife, Anna, manages the house and their four children; and different aspects of the past, twenty years ago and more, including Ralph's childhood and adolescence, his and Anna's mission trip to South Africa, where they get caught in a political scandal and deported to Botswana, where tragedy strikes.

A review on the front claims the book has "the tension of a first-rate thriller" (Literary Review), and one on a back says the reviewer was "enthralled to the very end" (Anita Brookner, The Spectator). Not for me. It took more than half the book for any acute tension to develop--neither Botswana nor the troubles in the present occur until the last 150 pages out of 320. Until then, I spent a lot of time wondering why we cared about their past in Africa, much of which is described in a daily-life sort of way. I did appreciate the plotting; it's obvious how Ralph's childhood drives them to Africa, and visible how Africa drives them to their present-day lives. I also liked the wording in places. Interestingly, I actually spent some time in Norwich, England, which is where the bits not in Africa are set, last year, so I recognized the vast majority of the place names.
3/5

Reading checklist:
Actually assigned:

• A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel
• City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
• 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
• "The Progress of Love" by Alice Munro

Not actually assigned:

• Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora by Lawrence La-Fountain-Stokes
• Sirena Selena vestida de pena by Mayra Santos-Febres and Debra Ann Castillo
• Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men by Lori B. Girshick and Jamison Green
• Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man by Chaz Bono
• The Lives of Transgender People by Brett Genny Beemyn and Susan R. Rankin

I can't wait to take you all on the conference journey with me!

I Am J

by Cris Beam

J hides his feminine body under two bras and four shirts. He hides from being photographed by being the one behind the camera. He hides from the slew of dyke and suspicion by keeping to himself, only interacting with his parents and his best friend, Melissa. Then an ill-fated kiss and some poorly chosen words catapult him on a whirlwind adventure to drop all that, stop hiding, and become who he really is. A fascinating painter named Blue, a friendly hotel worker, a poet with boy troubles, and a successful trans activist all help to guide J into a deeper understanding of not only himself, but Melissa and his parents as well. Triggers for self-harm.

J's experiences are varied, and the plot believable. Some of the devices were a little less so--are there really queer youth shelters that come with fully functional, queer-only schools? And where I come from, college applications need to be done by the end of winter break, and J was talking about it getting warm outside (in, presumably, Pennsylvania). But the actual motivations were clear and well-supported, which I consider to be much more important. The characters had surprising depth. J's father is Jewish and his mother Puerto Rican Catholic, and on the surface, her reaction seems strangely accepting, but when you really take a look at their actions as a whole, I think it worked. Melissa, too, allows us glimpses of problems that help explain why she doesn't always act with perfect understanding. J was a little bit overly perceptive for me--it felt like this was for the benefit of the reader, to understand why everyone else acts the way they do. For this reason, he is a shell character, allowing the reader to slip in, view the world through his eyes, and not feel entirely out of place. However, many protagonists are like this, including Harry Potter, so I forgive I Am J. It also touches on self-harm, believably, if only briefly.

Overall rating: 4/5

Project upshot: This was actually the inspiring book for the whole search--in order to find trans coming of age books, I looked up this book (which I already owned) on Amazon, looked under the 'other people bought' list, opened up all of those, looked at the 'other people bought' list for each of those, and repeated until I got out of relevant territory. I decided to reread it, to see if I wanted to put it in the paragraph. I'm considering it.

Refuse

by Elliott DeLine

Dean is an angry college-age kid that sometimes identifies as FTM transgender and sometimes decides he hates labels altogether. When his (female) roommate complains about their placement, the housing department places him with Colin, the only other out FTM on campus. Colin will go on to define much of the next years for Dean. In some ways they are similar--both love The Smiths and music in general, and Colin agrees with things Dean says. But mostly they are opposites. Colin is social, generally likeable, the poster boy transgender artist torn between being out to serve as a role model and going stealth (allowing others to believe he is a cisgender male) to be treated as a normal guy. Dean is sullen, bad at social interaction, full of unpalatable opinions, and otherwise extremely reminiscent of Holden Caulfield. Together they experience a trans support group with a troubled woman named Teddy, the sudden coming out of Dean's best friend Vivian's sister, Colin's on-again, off-again relationship with his girlfriend, and Colin's band, Owl Eyes, whose lead singer is both not quite good enough and Colin's best friend. Deep inside, though, Dean is honest with himself while Colin is not, and Dean has principles which he will not cross, but Colin will. These combined with a brutally honest first-person narration set after graduation interspersed with third-person narration set during college attach the reader to Dean. His inability to find something he wants to do after college and unwillingness to settle for something practical are offset to the reader by his real anathema of the social construct forcing him to do so and his self-awareness of the problem. We do not necessarily agree with Dean, but we understand why he does what he does. Triggers for mental illness and suicide.

Refuse is almost unrecognizable as the same story we left in the prequel, I Know Very Well How I Got My Name. Remaining are Dean's not-quite-fitting-in personality, his name, the shocking climax of the last book, and his best friend Vivian. Suddenly appearing are a snarky first-person narration, a love of The Smiths, writing, and music; and an attraction to guys. I'm also fairly sure Dean's parents were divorced before. These can't really be called flaws in this book so much as the last one, since this one (I think) was written first, and I've already written the review for the last one, so let this complaint stand on its own.
Dean was artfully handled to be sympathetic without being nice, and Colin, too, to be nice without being sympathetic. If there's any sure way to get an audience to accept or reject flaws, it's whether or not the character acknowledges and dislikes them. The plot tugged me ever onwards, and the organization didn't jar, oddly arranged in terms of time as it was. Definitely more engaging than the prequel.

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Project upshot: Not sure whether this book works as a touchstone. I like it better than the other, but it's so different from the book I want to write. Dean's personality colors everything in this book, and Leandra isn't like that at all. I'm glad I read it for its own sake, in any case.

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is the name of Gabe Williams' new radio show, where he gets to exercise his talent as disc jockey and hang out with his neighbor John, his musical mentor. It's the only part of his life that really makes sense--his family refuses to stop calling him Elizabeth, he can't see how to get a job or go to college as Gabe, and now that Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is getting popular at school, he's got to contend with some bullies making serious threats, the overtures from two girls who may or may not know what they're asking, and his best friend Paige acting weirder and weirder.

Excellent. I zipped through it. The characters are compelling and believable, at times walking masses of contradictions that still somehow make sense. The plot pulls you forward relentlessly. Cronn-Mills manages to slide some history in there without slowing down the book. Paige doesn't get a satisfying conclusion, but there's a fine line between concluding that something will remain unresolved (as happens for another subplot) and simply seeming to forget about it.

Overall rating: 5/5

Project upshot: This book is almost certainly going on the touchstone list.

I Know Very Well How I Got My Name

by Elliott DeLine

Our narrator, whose birth certificate name is mentioned so few times I can't remember or find it, learns what being gay means when Ellen Degeneres comes out. He learns what being transgender means when a girl brings an article on it to a GSA meeting. But his real education about gender, sex, love, and identity comes from Amy Wagner, a girl he befriends at school who quickly becomes his best friend, his first significant crush, the taker of his virginity, his re-christener, and indeed, so much that her increasingly inconstant treatment of him drives the book to a shocking climax.
Trigger warnings for suicide and extremely dubious consent.

I Know Very Well How I Got My Name is short, and a little bit oddly structured--we get Dean's childhood, his relationships with his father, mother, grandmother, cats, and friends besides Amy, but it ends abruptly before most of Dean's transition even happens, just as he's putting together a plan to effect it. This is probably due to the fact that this book is a prequel, and forced into its structure by that of the first book, Refuse, which I will read next. The characterization was expertly handled--the focalization during the childhood years clearly showed a child's point of view without using babyish language that would annoy the reader and without rough transition. It's tempting to tell the entire story from the point of view of looking back on the past, but telling a story-of-my-life tale in complete present tense requires skill. The reader can see how bad Amy is for Dean without, at least in my case, losing sympathy for Dean over his inability to see it too. I will definitely be reading the next book.

Overall rating: 4/5

Project upshot: I can definitely see using this as one of my touchstone books for the conference. I think the timeframe is better for my purposes than the sequel will be, but we'll see. Amusing how this review is shorter than the last--I write more when I have things to complain about. A character flaw.

The Best Boy Ever Made

by Rachel Eliason

Alecia Mueller has a plan for her life. She's going to find and marry the One, go to college for horticulture, be a farmwife, and never live more than a mile away from her best friend since childhood, Sam Oleson, the biggest tomboy in town. Her sister, Britney, on the other hand, only cares about cheerleading, the latest gossip, and Alecia's boyfriend, Jeremy. Alecia doesn't understand why her mother seems to think that Brit's got the right idea--she's only pulling Cs, and if she'd rather raise goats with Sam than go to parties with the boys from school, why wouldn't she? The boys from school bring kegs to their parties and try to get in her pants, and Alecia's waiting for the One. Another thing that Alecia's mom doesn't get is that Alecia puts loyalty before politics, and so when Sam comes out as transgender, Alecia doesn't hesitate to stick by her friend's side. As a country girl raised Catholic and conservative, Alecia has a lot to learn as Sam starts coming out at school and preparing to transition. Alecia's suddenly got a lot on her mind, including the meaning of her ongoing attraction to Sam, her mother's wholehearted rejection of anything queer, her favorite great-grandmother's ailing health, the consequences of her sister's partygoing ways, and an upcoming district debate about gay marriage.

The Best Boy Ever Made was a sweet story overall, and Alecia was a likeable character with her steadfast support of Sam, even when she wasn't totally sure what that entailed. She also comes to switch pronouns for Sam without being asked, which was nice (it having been totally clear which ones Sam wanted). Some of the plot seemed a little bit forced--Alecia's attraction to Sam wasn't well integrated. It was implied that this was on purpose; Alecia says she hasn't admitted it (to us) yet and now will have to come clean. But she also says that this had caused them to drift apart, and because the first time we meet Sam, he's fetching Alecia to check on their goats and to come out, we don't really see any of that, which would have been helpful. At least a one or two awkward meetings at school where Alecia bemoans their distance and implies that it was her fault would have done a lot for the story. Alecia's lack of internal anguish over anything but Sam's wellbeing, the debate, and her Grandma Becca also wasn't particularly believable--surely a girl raised by parents who won't even allow discussion of gay marriage in the house would have more of a negative gut reaction to Sam's coming out, and more apprehension concerning acting on her feelings? Sam, however, was a true-blue character, and the tension between Sam's 'I have to do this, no matter the social consequences' and Alecia's 'They're going to hurt you, what harm would waiting do?' was expertly handled so as not to make the reader facepalm at either one. Brit's story was also very well woven in, though a tender moment before the big showdown would have helped. The end felt a bit tied-up-in-a-bow, but thankfully at least one major thing (won't say what for spoilers) was left unhappily resolved, and it was the most crucial to do so for. Who knows, maybe they pull those kinds of stunts in the country? The only other thing I had to complain about was the syntax--is it a country thing to leave out half your contractions, or did Eliason just not have a good sense of natural speech? 'I am not ready for that, and neither are you' just doesn't flow unless you're a Vulcan. None of this totally ruined my suspension of disbelief, though, and some readers may find a deviation from typical plot refreshing.

Overall rating: 3.5/5

Project upshot: I'm a little disappointed--I was hoping to use this book as one of my touchstone books for the conference. I may still end up doing so, but I'm definitely going to have to use more than one if I do that. It's closely related to my story in that it's about an FTM transition (mine is an FTN, female to neutral, but it touches on the idea of going FTM first, and where am I going to find something that specific?) and about the relationship between the trans person and their best friend. I'd prefer something that I don't feel like I know how to improve, though. Still, I'm super excited to have finished my first book!
Also, style tribute goes to my old friend the Ink Mage at http://inkmagic.blogspot.com/. Unfortunately, she no longer runs the site, but it's definitely worth reading through the back entries if you want book recommendations in fantasy.