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257 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2012
Argh. Okay.Actually, aaaarrrrrghhhhh is more accurate.
I didn't realize the story was ripped from the headlines, and it feels vaguely exploitative.This story is entirely ripped from the headlines and it's very exploitative. As other reviewers have pointed out, they take Constance McMillen's life and turn it into a life lesson for a fictional entitled straight male baseball star.
I like Tessa. I like Tessa a lot. She's definitely a baby butch, but it's subtext in the story, not text. Without consciously thinking about it, she decides she's going to wear a tux to the prom. But she'll still wear heels and a purse, that makes it just for fun, right? Definitely not because femininity doesn't feel right. Nope.This hurts the worst. It's not the author(s) subtly addressing what it's like to be a gender variant teenage girl, it's just them being utterly ignorant about what it's like to be a gender variant teenage girl. They wanted the story about Tessa's tux, but they didn't want to have to sympathetically write an (icky, ugly, mannish) butch lesbian---who would want to read about someone like that?
I don't agree with the book's thesis about grand gestures being vitally important. This might be a personal hangup, but if you wanted me to forgive you for blabbing about something I'd told you in confidence in the most hurtful way possible, the way to go about it would not be to use the same "tell the world" approach to pressure me into forgiving you.Straight people need to be stopped.
I did like that love didn't have to be a grand gesture, or last forever, to be important and to change your life. And that friendship is a kind of love.
So... it's a YA novel, in other words, and it fails to avoid the usual pitfalls of YA novels.