This was a cute story and well written, but I didn’t connect to it emotionally as much as I did with Deaver’s first book, I Wish You All the Best. Deaver still plays with themes of gender nonconformity and coming of age while queer and discovering your sexuality and gender identity, but their main character is a much more difficult and complicated person (read: kind of an asshole). This is also a romance, though as with their first book, the main character’s emotional growth is the center of the book, not their relationship with the love interest.
Here we have Neil, a sixteen-year old trans boy who is away at boarding school in South Carolina, after his family sent him across the country (he feels he was sent there to keep him out of the way). He has a friend group of queer teenagers that have helped to center him and try to call him on his bullshit, but Neil lives in his own Neil world. His roommate, Wyatt, is also insufferable. A series of circumstances leads to Neil inviting Wyatt to travel to CA with him on spring break to attend his brother’s wedding (it’s always so convoluted, so I’ve given up trying to explain how the characters get to the fake dating), and the trip ends up changing not only their relationship, but some of the ways that Neil has viewed the world and his family.
Deaver always does a great job with emotional verisimilitude, and Wyatt is the most lovable human, but Neil is a difficult character who acts out and makes really bad decisions, which is never my favorite type of character because I didn’t even get anywhere close to that phase of adolescence. The way that Deaver pulls off Neils arc is great, but you have to put up with Neil being a jerk for quite a bit of this book (albeit, a funny jerk).
[3.5 stars]
