A Book Review Starring "Everything Changes" by Samantha Hale

The short version:
Raven can't really figure out why she's not attracted to the guys at her school. But when she meets her best friend's older sister's college friend, Morgan, and learns she's an out lesbian she quickly discovers her attraction and embarks on her first real relationship.

The long version:
Sweet, compact, easy to read coming-out story. Well written with a straightforward plot and plain (in a good way) language that moves with ease and swiftness and clear, easy to relate to characters.

The characters might not be the most depthful, complex in the world, but Raven is written as someone who both gay and straight kids alike can relate to. Her obstacles in coming out, both internal and external, are familiar yet ring true. For example, her attraction to a college girl makes perfect sense in that a slightly older girl would have already gone through her own coming out process and feel more comfortable in a college setting in which she gets to define herself. By the end, the pathos earned through Raven's coming out to different friends and her parents is well earned based on the strength of the writing and genuinely heartfelt.

At under 200 pages and with such a straightforward and (did I say easy?) plot, this title would be a great choice to pull out for reluctant and avid readers alike, particularly girls looking for a coming-out experience to both reference and identify with.

A Book Review Starring "Lies We Tell Ourselves" by Robin Talley

The short version:
Set in 1959 Virginia, Jefferson High School is starting their school year in January after the state government's failed efforts to stop integration. African-American Sarah and her sister Ruth, recently transplanted from Chicago because their parents want to be part of the movement for equal access to education, enter the halls to jeers and shoving, sneers and wads of paper. On the other side is Linda, born and raised in Davisburg and the daughter of a Southern conservative newspaper publisher, Linda only knows segregation and sticks to it. But when she and Sarah are thrown together as part of a French class project, she begins to not only question her views but also who she thought she was when both girls are unable to deny their attraction to the other.

Over the course of the school year, Sarah and Linda will learn about the hard repercussions of integration but also about discovering who you are even when who you are isn't what you thought was right or easy.

The long version:
What a strong debut.

Talley has managed to write historical fiction that feels real and rooted in fact without sounding didactic or dry. She's also woven in a lesbian subplot that feels genuine given the time period.

She's written two authentic main characters who both engage you and make you want to root for them, Linda in spite of her inherent bigotry. At the same time, it would have been nice if Sarah had a flaw or two, something to give her more humanity. She's a lovely character, strong and smart and yet conflicted about her sexual identity, but she's very all-good in a way that I think main characters written by first time writers sometimes are. In that sense I thought it was much easier to give Linda humanity because she's a bigot who's only just started to question how she sees the world.

Talley also created a somewhat vast cast of secondary characters but still manages to give them their own voices and personalities and maintain their consistency.

The plot takes place over the course of the abbreviated school year, it's well paced with constant and mounting tension. She doesn't shy away from the violence or consistent verbal abuse and taunting that likely happened to kids put in the position of integrating schools.

A Book Review Starring "Lies My Girlfriend Told Me" by Julie Anne Peters

The short version:
When Alix's girlfriend of six weeks Swanee dies of an aneurysm, Alix learns that Swan isn't the girl she thought she loved and so much more.

The long version:
Here's the thing.

There are so few authors writing young adult novels with gay or lesbian main characters. If you have fewer authors, you have a smaller pool of those kinds of books to recommend to potential readers. And if you have a smaller pool, perhaps as a result the quality of books may not rise to the level of greatness you would like.

Conversely speaking, it's nice to know that the pool of young adult gay and lesbian novels is so big today that we have a nice variety that includes those average relationship melodramas that may not rise to the level of a well-written, quality, creative novel but is nice enough to feature out lesbian teens in a narrative in which they are done coming out and we can move onto other, perhaps more entertaining, lighter storylines.

This is my second Peters novel. I feel much the same way as I did after the first. I find her novels lack character development, she writes main characters I not only don't like (not that it's a prerequisite, but it helps to keep me involved in the story) but don't feel they make logical decisions or are terribly interesting or compelling in some basic way. Rather, they make decisions in accordance with the story the author wanted to write ahead of time. I find her plotting and dialogue meandering, the secondary characters flat and one-dimensional.

I'm conflicted. Because there are so few young adult novels for the teen lesbian audience and because out of those that do exist a good portion of them are of the coming-out variety, it's nice to have books to recommend in which lesbians both feature prominently and they're doing something other than deliberating over coming out. And it's a cute cover that's pretty representative of the book, which is nice.

As an adult reader of young adult, I can't recommend this book. But I'm not sure that would stop me from suggesting it to a teen reader who's accustomed to that level or quality of writing and doesn't have enough lesbian young adult novels to choose from.

A Book Review Starring "Everything Leads to You" by Nina Lacour

The short version:
Aspiring LA production designer Emi unearths a letter in one of her estate sale finds that leads her to Ava, the illegitimate granddaughter of a recently deceased movie icon. At the same time, she's got her first big break designing sets for a charming indie film and learns about herself as a designer in the process.

The long version:
Part mystery-romance, part endearing melodrama. Lacour does a confident job of weaving the two plots together. You could kick the tires of the story if you wanted, but if I were a lesbian teenager, I'd be so happy to read a story about cute girls, a main character that is already out and a credible Hollywood-centric plot that comes across fun and convincing enough.

Main character Emi is cute and stylish, mystery girl Ava is hot yet sensitive and interesting. The two characters are given a nice subtly, as both could have easily devolved into over-the-top land. True the secondary characters don't do much other than serve the main characters, though it would have been nice if the best friend had an independent life and wasn't just there to serve. But the writing is sure handed and the minutia of production design is fun to read (especially if one doesn't dwell too much on the many accomplishments of an eighteen year old).

Cute, easy reading page turner.

A Book Review Starring "Frenemy of the People" by Nora Olsen

The short version:
Equestrian preppie-type Clarissa decides she's bisexual and wants to start a Gay-Straight Alliance, to the ire of loner out lesbian Lexie. The two come together when Clarissa's sister Desi, who has Down's Syndrome, wants to run for Homecoming Queen and also when Clarissa's house is being foreclosed on and Lexie offers her knowledge of shady bank practices to help Clarissa save their house.

The long version:
I don't even remember the end, and I usually suffer through when I've made it past the halfway point. Not the case here.

So poorly written, with underdeveloped, cliché characters and a flimsy plot (or plots, considering there are a few thin ones going on at once).

I wanted to think of this as a Hi-Lo book, but I thought that didn't give the Hi-Lo genre credit as writing for a specific audience. I can't see recommending this to even a reluctant reader.

A Book Review Starring "The Miseducation of Cameron Post" by Emily Danforth

The Short Version:
Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s in rural Montana, Cameron Post grows up with the weight of thinking her attraction to her best friend made her responsible for her parents' death. When beautiful Coley Taylor joins her church group and school, Cameron finds herself falling in love with her new friend and must deal with the consequences of being outed as a result.

The Long Version:
Given the evocative sense of detail, the specificity of time and place (and that it was set in a period that looks to align with when the author would have been that age) you may get the sense this is a thinly disguised narrative that may resemble autobiography. Not that it's a bad thing. The highly evocative feel actually gives the story and characters a depth and richness that involves you in the story.

Danforth does a great job of providing complexity and detail to her characters, even the secondary characters who might otherwise have come off as one dimensional or just plain awful, are given a nice sense of humanity. But it's her main character Cameron Post who carries the story, particularly through the dense, wordy parts that can make the read a bit slow.

And there are a lot of words in those 470 pages. While it's great that Danforth has a wealth of knowledge and detail from which to draw, I'm not sure it needed to be this long and, at times, this dense. It's one of those books that you sometimes ask yourself where was the editor.

The book can be split into two parts, the romance and it's aftermath. If I were a teenage lesbian, or recommending the book to a teenage lesbian, I'd want her to stop right before the first part ends, when the book is chock full of emotional and sexual tension that I'd crave at that age and find in satisfying doses here. The second half of the book, the aftermath lets call it, is a harder read. It may ring true (particularly for certain populations or areas of the country), it may even be semi-autobiographical, but it's not as much fun or as interesting as the first half.

A Book Review Starring "The Difference Between You and Me" by Madeleine George

The Short Version:
Sophomore activist Jesse is in love with preppy junior Emily, who she meets on Tuesdays for secret make out sessions because Emily is closeted and has a boyfriend. But their secret world collides with their public ones when they find themselves on opposite sides when a Walmart-esque corporation sponsors school activities to curry favor in the town they want to build their next superstore in.

The Long Version:
Kind of a messy story: it wanted to be three or so stories at once and never seemed to fulfill on any of them. For some inexplicable reason the main character's chapters were in the third person while the other two supporting characters chapters were in the first person. The story meandered a lot and what I gathered was the main plot didn't get started until halfway into it.

Kind of messy characters: they were cute and potentially endearing, but you could tell they were supposed to be over the top in an entertaining way, lots of old hippie protester types, the gay best friend who's into Ayn Rand, the prissy Tracy Flick overachiever, but they weren't over the top enough or developed enough. The main character was slightly more endearing, but also lacking in the development department.

Kind of a messy tone: Because the girls were on the younger side of high school, and given how the story started I expected a lighter tone, something that would be great for a younger lesbian or curious reader, which would have been great considering how few Lesbian YA books there are out there for the younger side of readers. But then there came the flip joke about roofies early on and a few other things that seemed out of place tonally with the tonal direction this story was taking me.

I'd still recommend this book for a younger high school reader, given the dearth of books that approach lesbian topics without being explicit, but I'm not sure how jazzed my booktalk would be.

A Book Review Starring "If You Could Be Mine" by Sara Farizan

The Short Version:
Set in Tehran, Iran, seventeen year old Sahar is in love with her best friend Nasrin. When she learns that Nasrin is going to be married, she discovers the answer to her problem in an obscure Iranian law in which the government will pay for gender reassignment surgery if someone is truly declared transgender, not born into the body of the gender they identify with.

The Long Version:
The long, convoluted version being that Sahar magically decides to get gender reassignment surgery so she can be with Nasrin. Even though it's plain as day that Nasrin, nor her middle class, aspiring family would ever go along with such a deal. And she comes upon this magical solve to her problem because she just happens to meet a friend of her shady cousin's who is transgender at the perfect moment when all this is coming to fruition. And this person, whose name I forget, just happens to take Sahar under her wing and along to her support group where she discovers this great law that she thinks she's magically going use to her advantage. Oh, and the wedding is in a few weeks.

You get the sense the author learned about this (albeit fascinating) law in Iran, which sounds totally antithetical to an oppressive Islamic regime, and then decided to build a story about it. Even though the story never made sense. It's a fascinating law, and someone could make a fascinating story based on it. But this wasn't it.

I had a hard time believing much about this story, from the characters' choices to the convenient plot developments. Sahar was likeable and sympathetic enough, but she never felt real.

What I found equally problematic, having nothing directly to do with the novel, was that this book is on plenty of Transgender YA booklists and Sahar is not a transgender person. She only wants gender reassignment surgery so that she can marry her best friend, she never identifies as a man either before or during the story. Nor did I find any of the transgender-related elements that are in the story very authentic, from the supporting transgender woman who takes Sahar under her wing to the other transgender person in the support group. I'd file this under Lesbian YA.

And I will.

A Book Review Starring "The Bermudez Triangle" by Maureen Johnson

The Short Version:
Avery, Nina and Mel have always been best friends. But everything changes when Avery and Mel start dating the summer before senior year while Nina is away at Stanford for a pre-college program.

The Long Version:
File Under "Dessenesque." As in Sarah and that subgenre of YA Girl Fiction composed of cute middle class girls who delve into issues of adulthood in pleasant prose, that reveal contemplative characters and relatively subtle relationships.

The writing was nice and breezy, making it easy to turn a page and get going. The characters all had some flaws, though they could have benefited with more. There were a number of YA-Boys-Written-By-Adult-Women, very sensitive types that don't necessarily sound like real boys, which comes with the territory of a lot of YA Girl Fiction.

Despite all three girls having their own major sub-plots, what really sells the book is how this surprising romance between two best friends changes them both in different ways. The third subplot involving Nina and her long-distance boyfriend was the least involving, though it served adequately as a counterpoint to her friends' relationship, and how one of them treats the other.

In all, a pleasant, satisfying Coming-Out story of the Dessenesque variety, which isn't a bad thing at all to be.