Reviewed by guest blogger Kaye Moore

Robin Reardon, May 2008. Taylor Adams is an evangelical Christian who is totally down with Jesus Christ.  He is also gay, and completely comfortable with that.  However, since his family and small conservative hometown are not down with gay Christians (or gays in general), he is not loud and proud.  He is quietly proud.  Taylor is madly in love with his boyfriend Will, and after his parents try to fix him up with one Christian girl too many, he finally snaps and comes out to his parents.  Their response is to send him to a Christian re-education center, where God will “heal” him of his desires.

At the center, which is named Straight to God, secrets start to come out about the dubious successes the center has produced with their gay and lesbian teens, which include suicides and the sexual abuse and murders of these teens by the head pastor.  Luckily for Taylor, he keeps his sanity by being admitted to a secret society of revolutionary Christian teens that discuss the Bible freely and feel that God made gay and lesbian teens on purpose, and there is no sinful mistake there.

One thing I really liked about this book is that the theological ideas of Taylor and his friends were really well-developed, but they still sounded like conversations that kids might actually have.  It seemed surprising to me that Taylor, having been raised in such a gay-unfriendly church, was so self-assured about his relationship with God, but I was willing to think of him that way since he was so smart about it all.  Also, the moderate allies that Taylor and his friends developed showed a fair representation of many mainstream Christians, who may be open but just haven’t challenged old ideas yet.  The villains though?  They were completely over the top.  I couldn’t put this book down, but when I came to the part when the lusty and deranged pastor lassoed Taylor, I think my eyes may have rolled a little.

This book would appeal to teens that enjoy reading about kids in extreme situations, but I think they would have to have some interest in religion, since it pervades every single page of this book.  There are some brief but graphic depictions of oral sex and masturbation, as well as an attempted male rape scene which readers may want to be aware of.   Overall, the title is a quick and compelling read, with likable characters and interesting theology, and recommended for all public library collections.

Reviewed by guest blogger Kaye Moore

Cheryl Rainfield, March 2010.  This traditional problem novel manages to be both gruesome and cookie-cutter.  It addresses teen Kendra’s cutting, her parents’ financial problems, her crush on sexy and sassy Meghan, and her quest to remember who raped her when she was a child.  Anyone who’s ever read anything about childhood sexual abuse will be unsurprised to learn that Kendra’s father is the culprit; there should have been some sort of red herring or, conversely, creepiness in the dad from the beginning, but there isn’t. That was a mistake.

The relationship with Meghan, the most appealing character, is sweet. What isn’t is the Teacher as Savior trope, in this case (as in so many others) related to Art as Savior.  Yes, Kendra’s escape from cruel reality is drawing, and the In-Tune Teacher is her art teacher. This book could be a guide to the formula of a problem novel.  It also might just resonate with the many readers who are interested in these themes.

Pat Lowery Collins, May 2009.  I read a lot of queer YA fiction, and I confess to growing weary of it sometimes; one can only read so many contemporary realistic gay teen novels, set in high schools and featuring closeted jocks, bitchy cheerleaders, and wacky theater kids.  This, then, was a breath of fresh air: it’s set in early-eighteenth-century Venice at the Ospedale della Pietá, the orphanage where Antonio Vivaldi trained young girls to sing and play various instruments.

The story is narrated by three of the girls.  Rosalba longs for life outside the orphanage, and particularly for boys.  Luisa is the diva, with a fabulous voice, a big ego, and (alone among the children) a real live mother who visits from time to time. Anetta is our lesbo heroine - she has a huge crush on Luisa that, of course, she can’t voice or even identify with, considering the era.  She knows she has a yearning to be close to Luisa but can’t relate that to the sort of desire Rosalba has for boys.  Luisa is annoyed by Anetta’s affections, but then Rosalba wisely advises that Anetta lay off, and this brings the pair closer.  It’s a lovely tale of unrequited love, and the backdrop is unique.  Highly recommended for all public and most school libraries, but do be aware that there is a rape scene that ends in a pregnancy.

Julie Anne Peters, 2009.   I really, really want to like Julie Anne Peters’ books.  I try again with each new one, but I just can’t do it.  Rage follows the pattern of her 2003 Keeping You a Secret: it starts out as an interesting, realistic problem novel, but soon deteriorates into a melodramatic parody of same. 

Rage is narrated by Johanna, a good girl in unrequited love, from a distance, with bad-girl Reeve.  Reeve has a mysterious and scary home life and has slept with every girl in school.  When the two finally get together, Reeve repeatedly warns Johanna that she’s no good for her, and eventually starts hitting her.  Johanna’s lies to cover up her unexplained bruises and cuts ring painfully true, but her naïveté does not. She can’t fathom, for example, why Reeve and her twin brother might possibly have two different last names; she can’t even come up with one possibility. 

Still, so far so good, as same-sex relationship abuse is tragically real, and it’s great for Peters to point that out to girls who might think that having a girlfriend frees them from the possibility of dating violence. But then the book goes into that melodramatic downward spiral.  Reeve’s stepfather stabs her mother, then slits her brother’s throat.  It feels tacked-on and wrong; the book didn’t need to go there.  The violent relationship between the two girls was enough.

Davida Wills Hurwin, November 2009. This superb, hard-hitting novel is based on the true story of a teenage white supremacist and his confrontation with a runaway turning tricks.  Jason’s born-again mother kicks him out when she finds out he’s gay, so he lives on the streets for several years, eating from garbage cans and looking for sugar daddies, but accepting cash from casual encounters to fund his daily survival.  Doug learned to hate black, Latino, and gay people from a young age, fueled by his drug use, his father’s daily violence, and his brother’s shooting at the hands of one of “them.”

When Doug’s world collides with Jason’s outside a doughnut shop, it changes Jason’s life forever, but Doug remains active in the white supremacist world. He marries a woman who swears she’ll smash their children’s heads against a wall if she finds out he, and they, have “one ounce of dark blood.” They teach their children to point out “black niggers” in the grocery store, and live their lives aggressively and defensively until Doug sees the light and begins to repent.

The characters are intensely real, and so is the dialogue.  The book reads like Adam Rapp or Ellen Hopkins right up until the ending, which disappoints. It’s great that Doug realizes he shouldn’t teach his kids to hate, and that Jason finds love and gets off the streets, but everything ties up too neatly.  Rapp or Hopkins would have left more scars on their characters.

Jean Hegland, 1996.  Eva and Nell, sisters in their late teens, have ambitions - Eva wants to be a professional ballet dancer and Nell has been pining for Harvard since she was a child.  But an unnamed, vague disaster strikes, and their plans evaporate as they lose access to electricity, water, gasoline, and food.  The story starts out strong, describing the sisters’ efforts to survive and the dangers they face as two isolated young girls, but then it takes some bizarre turns.  First, the sisters start having sex with each other; then, when Eva has a baby following a rape, both sisters begin lactating. They fight over the baby, giving him two different names, and Nell runs away from home, but Eva comes to find her and then, it seems, they live happily ever after. 

The survival portion of the story is quite well done, but the magical realism - or is it just magic? - and the incest twist are too jarring to be believable. I can’t really recommend this one even to survival-story fanatics because they will be disappointed in the end.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, September 2009. This powerful first-person narrative is set in a rehab center, where eighteen-year-old Zach has woken up with no memories of how he got there. It’s clear that he and his father are alcoholics and that his mother and brother are abusive, but that doesn’t shed a lot of light on the recent chain of events that led to his institutionalization.  The truth comes out over the course of Zach’s stay, thanks to his father-figure roommate and his caring therapist.

The book has the potential to be just another tale of rehab and redemption, but due to Sáenz’s incredible talent, it surpasses expectations to become the best YA novel I’ve read this year. Recovery does not come easy for Zach; he cries and screams and sweats out all of his pain and desire, and it rings so true that I found myself clenching the cover and almost tearing the pages as I turned them.  I gasped and had real tears of joy in my eyes on page 234.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its queer content.  We don’t know whether Zach is gay; he turns down a kiss from a boy, but later promises he will kiss him, but then says it might just be a thank-you.  Zach never mentions a girlfriend or boyfriend or any sexual behavior other than abuse by his mother.  Although he is in a mixed-sex rehab, everyone he connects with is male; on the other hand, he seems to relate to them as ersatz family rather than as romantic partners. The ambiguity surrounding Zach’s sexuality can be read as gaytopic in the sense that it doesn’t seem to matter to him; it’s not part of his confusion or his rehabilitation. That’s why this post has the “gaytopia” tag when the rest of the story is anything but lighthearted.

Ellen Hopkins, August 2009.  Hopkins has done the impossible - she’s made me love a novel in verse.  Generally I’m not into this trend; why not just write in prose?  But I fell in love with these characters, and really the verse is pretty prosaic, except for the poems that start each chapter.

Tricks follows five smart, well-meaning teens who get bullied and sidetracked into lives so terrible that prostitution is the only way out.  Eden is madly in love with her boyfriend, but her born-again parents won’t let her see him. They send her away to Tears of Zion, a rehabilitation camp, where her only chance of decent food, let alone escape, is sex with her guard. Seth is a small-town gay kid whose dad kicks him out for his sexuality, so he becomes a kept boy with a sugar daddy. Whitney’s is the most melodramatic story: she’s a middle-class girl who feels rejected by her boyfriend and family, which leads her to fall for the lies of an alleged model photographer who eventually hooks her on heroin and makes her have sex with his friends.  Cody is the least likeable character, a teenage boy who becomes a gambling addict and steals his parents’ credit cards to pay off a mounting series of debts, turning to hooking when the money runs out. Ginger has been abused by her mother’s string of boyfriends but finds redemption in her love affair with a girl, Alex; the two run away to Vegas and strip to pay rent. Actually all the kids end up in Vegas, but only a couple of them meet up.

Each of these kids (except maybe Cody) has this intense vulnerability that makes you want to hug them and give them money and tell them to get off the streets; each of them would do it, you think, if only you could say the right words. Hopkins delivers a solid message without being trite or condescending.  Highly, highly recommended for all public libraries and most high schools; there is graphic description of sexual acts both voluntary and coerced, as well as detailed descriptions of drug use. It’s necessary to drive the story, but conservative communities may not be ready.

Brian Katcher, October 2009.  Logan’s in his senior year of high school in Boyer, a small, dull Missouri town where he shares a trailer with his mom.  He looks forward to following his sister Laura to Missouri State University, the only escape the family can afford.  Senior year, Brian expects, will be just a holding pattern until college begins.

He’s surprised, then, to find that there’s a new girl in town. She catches his eye right away - she’s tall, with curly red hair and braces, and she dresses far more stylishly than the other girls.  Plus, she’s just different - new to Boyer, new to school, and new to Logan, who got burned by his long-time girlfriend and didn’t expect to find anyone else until college.

Logan and Sage begin spending time together, as much as they can considering that her parents are ultra-strict and won’t let her date, even in groups, even though she’s eighteen.  Logan is confused by this because her younger sister is allowed more privileges.  He’s attracted to Sage and tries to kiss her, and then she tells him her secret: she was born male.

Logan freaks out - runs away, hates her, wonders if he’s gay, feels shame, hopes no one else can tell - the gamut of immediate emotions you’d expect. As he calms down, though, his feelings for Sage change.  He hates her, then he misses her, then he decides he’d like to be her friend.  Ultimately, the two have sex.  Then Laura sees Sage in the shower and the game is up - Logan has to admit he’s attracted to someone with a penis.

The final portion of the book is more melodramatic than the beginning, with date rape and mental hospitals and Sage’s decision to live as a man again.  While this does paint an accurate picture of the difficult lives many transgendered teens lead, I would have preferred the book to focus on Logan’s struggle with his attraction to Sage, and Sage’s blossoming into the woman she wants to be.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense that Sage would decide just before college that she can’t live life as a woman because no one would date her if they knew; she doesn’t appear to consider taking off for St. Louis or San Francisco and finding a life among transgendered young adults there. Still, the story is interesting, the characters appealing, and the rural setting a refreshing change from the suburban hell most fictional gay kids seem to be stuck in. Recommended for all public libraries.

Alex Sanchez, June 2009.  Sanchez is known for his novels about young Latinos coming out in high school; this is a bit of a departure in that its protagonist is a straight teen in trouble for beating up guys that flirt with him or suggest he’s gay, even jokingly.  Diego is a quiet boy who loves the ocean and is shy around girls, so he doesn’t understand why his temper flares when someone calls him “faggot” or a man touches his shoulder; neither does his mother or Ariel, the girl he’s crushing on.

It turns out that Diego’s stepfather, who shot himself in the head before the action begins, had been molesting Diego for many years.  His mother knew, but told herself it couldn’t be true. Diego worries that his passive acceptance of the abuse means he too is gay, despite his feelings for Ariel, and he can’t stand anyone else suggesting that’s the case. He’s also clandestinely cutting himself.

This is a classic problem novel; Diego struggles with his secret, a kind adult (probation officer Mr. Vidas) helps him through it, and in the end he gets the girl and makes up with his mom. However, certain elements of the story strain credulity.  Diego at first receives a suspended sentence for his fight with another student, pleading for probation instead so that he’ll be assigned to Mr. Vidas.  It’s difficult to imagine a real teen making this choice rather than seeking another adult - a teacher, priest, or therapist - in whom to confide.  The dialogue is often forced as well, particularly that between Diego and Ariel, whose character is particularly undeveloped.  Also, Diego’s healing process seems remarkably rapid considering what he’s been through with his stepfather as well as his mother. Still, readers will be on Diego’s side, and Mr. Vidas is an excellent role model, as is Diego’s loyal friend Kenny. Recommended where problem novels are still popular or where there is high demand for YA Latino fiction. The prose flows well, the page count is low, and the vocabulary is simple, so this would work well for reluctant readers too.