In Mike We Trust

P.E. Ryan, February 2009. Protagonist Garth came out to his best (female) friend recently, and then made the mistake of telling his mom. She insisted he not tell anyone else, claiming worry over potential run-ins with violent homophobes. Enter Mike, the twin brother of Garth's deceased father. He's not gay, but is ultra-supportive, taking Garth to a gay bookstore and setting him up on a date with a cute boy. Soon, however, Mike entices Garth to help him with phony charity schemes, Mike's only source of income. The author does a good job at making sure Mike and Garth are neither heroes nor villains. There's a great deal of moral ambiguity here, but none of it revolves around sex or sexuality. Garth doesn't really have a hard time dealing with being gay; he's more worried about his mom's reaction than his own identity. Mom's abrupt turnaround at the end is not realistic, but fans of Garth will be glad to see it anyway.

Suicide Notes

Michael Thomas Ford, October 2008. Jeff wakes up to find he's in a psych ward with bandages on his wrists, but refuses to believe he belongs there. He's committed for forty-five days, but for most of it, he refuses to reveal why he hurt himself in the first place. And about halfway through, he gives in to the sexual advances of a patient named Rankin - and likes it. Jeff's psychiatrist is convinced he tried to kill himself because his best friend Allie began dating a boy named Brent. This is true, but not in quite the way the doctor had in mind. Jeff was in love with Brent, and Allie can't forgive him for not being honest with her about his sexuality.

This gripping, suspenseful book is probably not for your youngest teens, depending on their life experience; the sex scenes are appropriately graphic, as we experience them from inside Jeff's head, and suicide is, of course, a major theme. Highly recommended for readers who can handle it, and for all public libraries.

Big Guy

Robin Stevenson, March 2008. This 106-page novel from Orca Soundings, an imprint for high interest/low level books for teens, is packed with issues. Derek's mom has abandoned the family; his homophobic father doesn't know he's gay; he's dropped out of high school; he's gained eighty pounds in the past year and his online boyfriend doesn't know it; and he's not sure how he feels about his job as a home health aide for Aaliyah, a defensive young woman in a wheelchair. Despite this smorgasbord of problems, the story resolves neatly without being cheesy. Derek's dad turns out to have a human side (barely); his boyfriend doesn't mind that he's fat; and he learns Valuable Lessons from Aaliyah. Recommended where other Orca titles are popular as well as in outreach settings.

Project Sweet Life

Brent Hartinger, February 2009. Dave, Curtis, and Victor are fifteen years old and, they feel, exempt from having to get summer jobs; unfortunately, their fathers disagree. How can the boys manage to have the awesome summer they've planned while working at the same time? This conundrum launches Project Sweet Life, their plan to make a whole summer's worth of income in one fell swoop. They start out simple: have a garage sale, selling everything they own that has a market value. When that backfires, they try to win reward money for catching a bank robber. This also doesn't go well, so they decide to find hidden treasure...and so on, throughout the summer, until they've logged more hours on these schemes than they would have at their fictional jobs lifeguarding, mowing lawns, and frying chicken.


Hartinger is known for his sensitive, funny portrayals of gay teens in Geography Club and Order of the Poison Oak, but there isn't a lot of homo action in Project Sweet Life. This is a new type of gay novel altogether, where the gay characters - Dave's uncle and his "friend" - are in the background, assisting the boys with the least illegal of their plots, and the word "gay" isn't even mentioned. That makes this a good pick for a conservative community and for middle-schoolers. Recommended for all public and school libraries.

Twelve Long Months

Brian Malloy, June 2008. Malloy's last gay YA novel, The Year of Ice, was a harsh, depressing portrayal of what it was like to be gay in a rural area thirty years ago. Twelve Long Months couldn't be more different: it's contemporary and lighthearted. High school senior Molly lusts after her lab partner Mark, and is delighted when she learns they're both leaving Minnesota for New York after graduation. Molly will be attending Columbia while Mark will be painting houses with his uncle. It's only after the move that Molly discovers what he couldn't tell her in their small town: he's gay. She's not as devastated as you might think; instead, she and her friends tag along with Mark to gay clubs, and she begins dating a boy who shares her interest in physics. The characters are not vividly drawn, and the plot is slight, with coming-of-age the only real development. Recommended for large YA collections or where there is high demand for queer YA fiction.

Absolutely Maybe

Lisa Yee, February 2009. Yee, the author of an excellent middle-grade trilogy that recounts the same events from three different points of view, takes her first foray into YA with Absolutely Maybe. Eighteen-year-old protagonist Maybe (christened Maybelline after her mother's favorite line of makeup) flees from Florida to LA after high school partly in search of her absentee father, but mostly to escape her self-centered mother and Mom's abusive husband.

Traveling with Maybe are her friends Hollywood, an aspiring filmmaker enrolled at UCLA, and Ted, the reason this book is reviewed here. Ted, a short, funny Thai boy who's very close to his adoptive parents, quickly finds work as the personal assistant to an aging diva. Ted's presentation is rather fabulous, raising my gaydar early on, but I decided it was my imagination. After all, the book jacket and subject headings don't address homosexuality, and neither does the author's earlier work. It's not until page 272 (of 273) that Maybe and I learn the truth.

This isn't the gayest book you'll ever read, but Ted and his friends are strong, appealing characters, and the story is an intriguing one. Recommended, especially in communities where you can't buy most of what I review.

Absolute Brightness

James Lecesne, February 2008. When Phoebe's cousin comes to stay with her family in the small town of Neptune, New Jersey, she's embarrassed by his flamboyance. Leonard is only thirteen, but he's pretty obviously gay, and not just gay but "different. Don't get me wrong. I like different. I am different," says Phoebe, "but when different goes too far, it stops being a statement and just becomes weird." Her cousin wears rainbow platform heels, believes in channeling the dead, creates inventive vodka drinks to soothe his aunt's stress, and makes over every female in town - except Phoebe, whom he deems his ideal.

Phoebe's worried about Neptune's reaction, but in fact, Leonard gets along with everyone except a few token adolescent homophobes. When he begins to work at her mother's beauty salon, he befriends her middle-aged clients and even reads to a lady whose eyes are failing. He arranges a reunion between his aunt and her ex-husband and befriends the theater kids after an amazing audition as Ariel in The Tempest. When he disappears, then, the town rallies to look for him, but not for long, as other local events gradually take precedence over the search for a boy they knew briefly and who probably ran away.

Phoebe can't forget Leonard, though. After he's gone, she learns that he considered her his best friend, and her guilt and love drive her to continue the search. Even after Leonard's body is found, Phoebe doesn't give up until she's satisfied with her knowledge of his relationships and his ultimate good nature.

The book goes on a little too long at 472 pages; a few characters, such as Deirdre and Larry, could have been sacrificed to make the length more manageable. The sainthood of Leonard is a little overboard as well. Still, the story is a sweet one of a teen girl learning to judge people on their merits instead of their reputations. Recommended.

A Really Nice Prom Mess

Brian Sloan, February 2008. I'm a sucker for books and movies that happen all in one night; Dazed and Confused and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist come to mind. Screenwriter Sloan's first novel is in the same vein: high school kids party like there's no tomorrow, which, you know, there isn't, in the book at least. In A Really Nice Prom Mess, Cameron can't go to prom with Shane, his closeted jock boyfriend, so they double with a pair of girls: their best friend Jane and smoking hot, falling-down-drunk Virginia. Cameron's night gets progressively more bizarre as he meets porn stars and drug dealers; makes out with a stripper and his boyfriend's date; breaks into a house; dances onstage; and in the end, befriends a cop who looks oddly familiar.

No one's ever been to a prom like this; the story is intended as a farce, not a realistic night in the life of a high school senior. It's tons of fun. Give it to your readers who enjoyed Fat Hoochie Prom Queen

Gravity

Leanne Lieberman, October 2008. This is not the average teen novel in which the author strives to make the characters as accessible as possible; nor does Lieberman create a fantasy-novel sense of otherworldly place. The author's debut novel is heavy with the language and rites of Orthodox Judaism, even including a five-page glossary of Yiddish terms in the back of the book. Narrator Ellie Gold, a devoutly religious high school sophomore, keeps kosher, blesses every meal, and won't turn on a light switch on the Sabbath. She wears skirts below the knee and beige full-coverage bras because she wants to, as opposed to her sister Neshama, who resents that their father requires this type of clothing.

The book begins with the family splitting up for the summer. While Ellie's parents go to Israel and Neshama is off to summer camp, Ellie spends the summer with her ex-Jewish grandmother Bubbie, still keeping kosher but getting more comfortable in a two-piece bathing suit. It's at Bubbie's cabin that Ellie meets Lindsay, the kind of girl she has never gotten to know at her religious school: flirty, saucy, wearing a string bikini and willing to whip it off for skinny-dipping in the lake. The two girls start flirting, and this is where we see the complexity of Ellie's character: she's sweetly dorky when she gets nervous and ends up babbling about biology. Lindsay is less complicated, bragging about the boys she's kissed. The girls rekindle their friendship back in the city, and begin a sexual relationship that feels wrong to Ellie for more reasons than her Judaism; she suspects that Lindsay is just using her, whereas for Ellie, this is everything. The sex scenes are short but hot; the subplot about Mrs. Gold's breakdown is curiously feminist without being obvious; and the contrast between the sisters is appealing. Recommended.

Nothing Pink

Mark Hardy, November 2008. In 1970s rural Virginia, Vincent knows he's gay but can't tell anyone, let alone his preacher father and even holier mother. He resorts to stealing gay porn, dreaming about Barry Manilow, and crushing out on his new friend Robert. Eventually, Robert and Vincent hook up, bonding over horses and nature walks until their sweet first kiss: "He must have brushed his teeth right before bed because he tastes like candy canes. When he breathes out it smells like Christmas." Vincent's shame weighs down the story until, in the final chapter, he's sitting at a campfire with a church group and suddenly realizes that God couldn't possibly think being gay is a sin.

It's hard to imagine today's teens relating to this story; modern queer kids are likely to have someone to confide in, even if they can't be out and proud to everyone they know. The 1970s setting gets in the way of the plot, and the Jesus talk is pretty heavy-handed. Still, the careful writing, simple plot, and low page count (109 in hardcover) might appeal to those still willing to read historical problem novels.

Fat Hoochie Prom Queen

Nico Medina, May 2008. Madge Diaz is a fat and fabulous high school senior with a mission: to make sure her skinny, popular rival, Bridget Benson, isn’t prom queen – no matter what. Madge and Bridget have been enemies since Bridget beat out Madge for a children’s TV role, and growing up hasn’t stopped them from sniping at one another whenever they get the chance. Madge teams up with her best friend Lucas to bring Bridget down, first by running against her for prom queen, and then by organizing a huge and lavish anti-prom party. The Bridget battle is set against a backdrop of Lucas’s boy problems, Madge’s mom problems (she’ll only prepare diet meals), and the discovery that perfect Bridget has some serious problems of her own. And hallelujah! the book doesn’t end with Madge losing weight; she succeeds without ever apologizing for her plus-size pants.

The characters use alcohol, drugs, and the F-word with a frequency not unrealistic among high school students, but which might give some pause to more conservative parents. Gay culture is celebrated throughout the book, but sex scenes are not graphic, happening mainly offscreen. Although the book’s chaos is part of its charm, there are a few too many plot threads to keep track of: for example, a story involving Madge’s fashion-designer sister is dropped abruptly. However, Fat Hoochie Prom Queen is a worthwhile purchase; it’s a romp of a read that will fly off YA shelves.

The Last Exit to Normal

Michael Harmon, March 2008. Ben is fourteen when his mom walks out after his father announces that he's gay. Ben goes downhill from there: "I took my first hit from a bong two weeks after my mom left. I got plastered at a kegger a week later, dropped a tab of acid the next month, and got busted for defacing public property three days after that. I was on a roll, and I was just getting going." After a couple of years of this behavior, including Ben's arrest for driving the escape car after his friends steal beer from a store, Ben and his dads move to eastern Montana. The idea is that country life will save Ben from the "negative influence" he's getting in the city.

Rough Butte, Montana, is quite different from what Ben is used to...not least because of his uber-strict step-grandmother, who hits him with a wooden spoon whenever he swears - including words like "crap" that he's used to thinking of as pretty innocuous. But the real problem is their next-door neighbor, Mr. Hinks, who makes no secret of his homophobia, but does a better job of hiding his abuse of his eleven-year-old son. Ben takes on these problems and a full-time schedule of farmwork while also pursuing The Girl. These events, and the humor and warmth with which they're told, make for a compelling, fast-paced novel that doesn't skimp on character development and has less gay content than it appears at first. Recommended as a fish-out-of-water story, a coming-of-age tale, and of course, a book about how to deal (and how not to deal) with a gay parent.

Down to the Bone

Mayra Lazara Dole, February 2008. Protagonist Laura doesn't identify as lesbian (or tortillera, the taunt preferred by homophobes in her Miami neighborhood), but she is in love with Marlena - she knows that for sure. When she's kicked out of her Catholic high school after a teacher discovers their love notes, and then kicked out of her home when her mom can't deal, Laura moves in with her friend Soli and her open-minded mami. Marlena quickly abandons Laura for Jesus and a Cubano husband, and Laura won't come out even to other dykes, so she's lonely for a while. In quick succession, she befriends a boi, dates a boy, gets roofied at a gay club, is held up at knifepoint by a homophobe, comes clean to her friends, and begins dating a beautiful waitress. Is this too much plot for one YA novel? Yes, but it's a big messy commotion of a book in the first place, so the drama works. Recommend to readers who liked Sofi Mendoza's Guide to Getting Lost in Mexico and The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez as well as your gay teens.

M+O 4EVR

Tonya Cherie Hegamin, April 2008. This first novel, poetic and daunting, tells the story of O(pal) and M(arianne), best friends in a small Pennsylvania town. They're inseparable as children, but part ways when they go off to high school, where M becomes a dissembler and O a dissenter. M forgets the kisses the girls shared under a blackberry bush in order to try out for cheerleading and become the county's first black homecoming queen, while O is a scholar who throws up emotional walls that block any other friendships from forming. Near the beginning of the book, M's body is found in a ravine, leaving O friendless and unsure of her future. Intertwined with the girls' story is the tale of Hannah, a runaway slave whose ghost appears as a warning to M. The veil Hegamin drapes between the reader and the narrator leaves this one too complex for younger and reluctant readers, but excellent for older teens and college students.

Love and Lies: Marisol's Story

Ellen Wittlinger, July 2008. Readers of Wittlinger's acclaimed Hard Love (1999) will rejoice in this new novel about Marisol, the touchy punk-rock lesbian with whom protagonist Gio fell in unrequited love. Love and Lies features a cast of gay characters including Birdie, Marisol's flamboyant roommate; Lee, small-town baby dyke with a crush on Marisol; and Olivia, Marisol's beautiful and talented writing teacher. As is typical of gaytopia novels, the action revolves around a romance rather than the coming-out process. In this case, our heroine falls for Olivia, who seems too good to be true; she showers Marisol with gifts and praises her writing, calling her "the star of my class." It turns out, of course, that Olivia is not all that she seems. The main story is set against subplots involving Birdie's neurotic boyfriend and a road trip to Provincetown. Great romance with depth and personalty.