4 Stars!

Heartbreaking while uplifting, this was an unique tale showcasing the challenges the LGBT community faced and still faces.

This chronicles a couple days in the life of several teens and their journey towards finding love and themselves, all told by the affecting omniscient and collective voices of those who’ve come before and are now long gone, tragically taken by AIDS.

While wistfully sad and bittersweet, this was full of hope and optimism and a recommended read!

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I didn't like the premise when I read about it. When I finally got around to this one, how many times did I cry? I'm going to start crying again probably.

Queer and trans people almost never grow up in families who are like us, so discovering queer and trans history is one of the rituals of becoming part of the community. Learning how to hear the greek chorus of men who died of AIDS, of the real flawed transcendent people who came before me, is exactly how it feels to me to be queer.

I could quote half the book, but I'll try not to.

"We tried to tell them what was happening. We tried to tell them the disease was spreading. We needed doctors. We needed scientists. Most of all, we needed money, and to get money, we needed attention. We put our lives in other people's hands, and for the most part, they looked at is blankly and said, What lives? What hands?" ( )

nice but not really my thing. I think I'd rather have read this when I was a teenager figuring out my sexual identity, not as an adult.

Easy to read, though, a relief after the last book I read, which took me about six months! ( )

4.5 Stars if I could
This is going to be a tough review to write because my feelings about it are complicated. I keep swaying back and forth between loving it for it's important message and beautiful writing and wishing that there was more content and just more of everything. 208 pages is not enough!


Narration:

We read this for my book club this month and a lot of the girls did not like the narration AT ALL. I was totally opposite. I loved it and wanted more of it. I wanted more of this older generation's story. Although when I really got into reading it, I kind of wished the narration was saved for the beginning or end of the chapters. There were points when this God-like voice would bust in and start preaching in the middle of a scene, and while I didn't hate when they did it, I could have lived without SO many interruptions. But really that's just being nit-picky because I did really enjoy the narration and think without it this book would've been so much less.

What I like:

I freaking love that this has become a popular book. How cool is it that gay AND straight people all over the country are reading this book?! When I was in high school if you would've told me that we would get to the point where people would carry around a book in public with 2 guys making out on the cover, I would have never believed you. I think that is so important and shows how far we've come. I think a book like this can open so many minds to what it is like growing up different (in any way not just in your sexuality). Another thing I really loved was the writing. You guys, this book is so beautifully written. It is a quote-lovers dream. I could have marked every other page for something that struck me as worth remembering (if it wasn't a library book that is).

What I'm a little ehhh about:

I like the idea of this book and think it's an important book in the overall YA scene. But maybe that's not enough. I mean not that much actually happens in this book. Guys kiss, people live their everyday lives, we get a little peek into some of the hate that homosexuals face now and in the past, but that's about it. I felt like the Avery/Ryan relationship was completely rushed through. Avery is a Transsexual and I almost feel like he was thrown in as token. Like "oh I should really address that part of homosexuality... here you go, here's a Transsexual... but I'm not going to go into detail what his life is like or anything, he's just there". Bottom line here is 208 pages is not enough time to explore the important issues that are being addressed.

OVERALL: I love that there is a YA book about a subject like this. I think it's incredibly important and the book itself is full of beautiful writing. It is narrated in a unique all-seeing way and I really enjoyed that. I just didn't personally feel like 208 pages was enough to really dig into this important topic. Definitely worth reading though!!

My Blog:
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After reading two of his books (this and Dash and Lily's book of challenges or whatever the original title is), I gotta say I'm not sold on this author. My biggest problem with this book was the POV, it's written in first person plural???? It's in we form, and the we is I guess gay guys who died of AIDS in the 80s. It just didn't sit well with me, and I would have preferred if it had been one specific dead guy seeing all these stories, rather than a bunch of nameless faceless people.

I did enjoy most of the stories and characters, even though I would personally never kiss someone for that long. Ugh, just the thought makes my skin crawl. The fact that it has happened for real makes me curious though, and I like that the author talked to one of the guys to properly describe the experience. I can only imagine the back pain you'd get after doing something like that.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more the narrator bothered me. The "we" narrator. At one point they specifically tell you go download a song and listen to it, and at other times they're just sooo annoyingly preachy. Other times it just describes a lot of feelings that I suppose we should be able to identify with and I just don't. I think the story was strong on its own, and didn't need these constant interuptions from the narrator.

It also falls in the AIDS was a bad thing that happened to gays in the 80s trope that I dislike, and completely ignores the fact that it is still a problem today for a lot of people. I keep seeing this in books dealing with this topic, and while I understand that it must have been a horrible thing to live through, to have people blame you for dying, it still happens today and that is almost never mentioned in books like these, at least not as far as I've noticed.

And honestly, Cooper surviving didn't thrill me. I usually like a happy ending, but that just didn't seem right. It was also kinda gross that it was apparently based on a real event, even though the author tries to explain that he meant no harm by using it like that. No, it should've ended differently.

Oh well, it was a quick read and despite my dislikes it was enjoyable (it technically only took me a day to read it, but I did cheat and read the first twenty pages some days ago). ( )