Oklahoma teen Arin Andrews recounts his childhood and adolescence, struggling to identify and articulate his gender dysphoria, coming out to his mother and family and falling in love as he realizes his true self.
The long version:
It's both really special and a little unfortunate that this book is so intertwined with Katie Rain Hill's "Rethinking Normal," her memoir recounting her own childhood and adolescence overcoming gender dysphoria. Great in the sense that we have two people who discover their transgender selves separately and together, and also together as a couple (which adds a little bit of special novelty). But also maybe a little unfortunate in that, given they follow the same general format (perhaps because they were both published by Simon & Schuster at the same time) in terms of both narrative and physical structure (with the same style of inserted picture at the beginning of each chapter) you can't help as a result to compare the two in terms of narrative. It's inevitable, but somewhere along the way I put that aside and was happy that I did so.
This book is wonderful on multiple counts. Aside from its being the first of its kind to confide in readers the journey of a transgender teen, it manages to be graceful and well written. Andrews recounts his tale with such great detail for recall of past events and ability to describe his feelings as he felt them at the time. What a great feat he's accomplished. He takes you on his journey and manages to never lose you as a reader (with the able assistance of his co-writer).
And being that I'm a sucker for a good cover, I really loved this one.
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