Author: Rachel Eliason
Release date: February 14, 2014
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: LGBT, YA, Romance
Buy on: Amazon
Goodreads
Alecia Mueller, a conservative country girl, knows how her life is going to turn out. She is going to grow up, meet “the one,” get married and live in the country. When her best friends Sam comes out as a Female to Male Transgender, she chooses personal loyalty and friendship over politics. But what if the boy that Sam is becoming is “the one?”
I received a copy in exchange of a honest review.
I kind of don't know where to start with this book. I think it's best to just start at the beginning.
The book opens with this as the first sentence: "Hi, my name is Alecia Mueller and I will be your narrator for this story." I feel like that is such a classic beginner's mistake. The beginning just read like you read a diary of a person or something and it's just such a cliché. And it feel like it doesn't do the story justice (or at least, what it could have been). And things like this continue throughout the story: she keeps talking to you like you are there and what you both could be seeing if you actually were there and the more it happened the more it annoyed me.
So as you read, Alecia is the main character of the book, along with Sam who is a Female to Male Transgender. Alecia seems a bit like a twelve year old: her way of thinking and acting comes across as a bit childish. But as the story progressed I think that may also be because her parents treat her like such and because how uneducated they are (so it could be done by the writer because of that, or the character is just not that well thought out of). So yeah, Alecia's parents: total a-holes. They can easily win the worst parents of the year, nope make that decade award. Alecia has a sister who is also kind of an a-hole, but she has some great development throughout the story and there's a little brother who's never really seems there (or he's just not important to the story).
Then you got Sam (actually Samantha, but towards the end Samuel). All his life he knew he wasn't really a girl and when he was 17 he decided to really look into options and told his father. His father who is by the way super nice and supportive. So he starts therapy and later on tells his best friend Alecia the truth. Alecia gets really confused, having never been educated by her a-hole parents and school about LGBT. But she accepts, because Sam is her best friend and somewhere she always knew. Not everyone is so supportive though. Alecia's parents ban her from seeing Sam and people at school also aren't that nice. The rest of the story is just really overcoming all of that (and the start of a romance).
There are certain points in the story that I feel moves a tad bit fast. A thing that makes it difficult to keep track off is that there also isn't a real transition when the writer moves on. You're reading and all of a sudden you a month later; you just don't see it coming. Also, certain events seem to happen really fast, which makes it seem unreal to me.
There is also a couple of times that I noticed there were mistakes in the story. Character's names were mixed up, some facts were wrong (at least from mentioned in other parts of the book) and those are just things I wished attention was paid to it.
And can I also just say that the story had a really Degrassi - Adam feel to it? Not sure if you know the show and the character, but I just really felt like it could have been Adam and Becky: they were going through quite the same thing, though Adam had already had most of his transition done.
It was an okay book, but I thought it could have been a lot more.
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