A heartfelt, blisteringly honest book about censorship and sexuality. ( )

I’m not sure how to preface this review of Saskatoon-based Beth Goobie’s young adult novel Hello, Groin except to admit it: I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, Hello, Groin is as earnest a teen novel as you’ll ever find. I really appreciated this quality. It’s also heartwarming as hell, which (young) adults or not, is something we all need a little bit of now and then. On the other hand, there were quite a few things that irritated me while reading this book—kind of like an itchy sweater. Mostly, it was the combination of shaky characterization and clunky storytelling that eventually got to me. Either of these on their own would have been frustrating, but the two together really took away from some of the positive experiences I had reading the novel...

See the rest of the review on my website: http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/an-earnest-but-flawed... ( )

Reviewed by Long Nguyen for TeensReadToo.com

The title will make you laugh, the story will provoke you to think.

Dylan lives the good life: great family, amazing boyfriend, and a best friend she can rely on. That is until she confronts her real identity, when she admits to herself that she prefers girls rather than boys. Beth Goobie, in a stellar effort, portrays the life of a lesbian teenager too afraid of the repercussions upon her life if and when she comes out to her friends and family.

Dylan doesn't want to make her life any more difficult but her best friend, Jocelyn, has become presently absent in her life; she isn't able to give her boyfriend what he wants, no matter how hard she tells herself she can do it; and things only get more complicated when Dylan volunteers to design the new book display for the school library.

HELLO, GROIN, along with a voicing out of the wrongness of such a social taboo as being homosexual, is a fight for freedom from censorship. The display Dylan creates says something important, both to her and to certain others, whether they were contributors of ideas or the understanding kind. But when the school principal decides to censor parts of the display, rumors begin to spread about Dylan, and she begins to let her secret take control of her life, in a negative way.

Goobie does a fantastic job in portraying a character that is very much believable in her thoughts and actions. She speaks out against censorship and how hard it is on a person who, along with the regular angst and struggles of being a teenager, must also now ask herself who she is and whether or not self-sacrifice for the people around her is more important than making herself feel human and allowing herself to be, simply, herself.

HELLO, GROIN is a thought-provoking novel that asks questions that are important to face in this day and age of social faux pas and suggests a few select answers which readers should certainly take upon themselves to consider wholeheartedly. HELLO, GROIN is well told story by a great novelist. ( )

This is a lovely coming of age/coming out story. Dylan seems happy hanging out with her beautiful best friend and her considerate boyfriend - but all is not as it appears - Dylan is attracted to her friend Jocelyn and not her boyfriend Cam.
When she has an idea for the school library display, Dylan starts to confront her own feelings, and starts a chain of events that will result in her publicly facing her feelings for Joc and Cam.
(spoilers)
This is a pretty story, and while I enjoyed it, it felt gauzy, slightly distorted from reality. When Dylan begins to tell people that she's a lesbian, she receives almost universal understanding - the person most upset by the idea was herself, initially. From her parents to her boyfriend, to the object of her affection, the people most important to her accept and cherish the truth of her. While other people in the story do seem to have difficult times, everything works out very easily for Dylan. But possibly this is key to the message of the story - once you are comfortable and in love with yourself, everything else either falls into place, or doesn't matter?
I'd give this to people looking for coming out stories, stories about censorship, stories about high school relationships, or growing up. It reads well as a simple romance story. ( )

Although I still can't get past the truly gross title ("groin" is just such a raunchy word to me...it conjures up thoughts of paunchy old baseball players with hernias...ugh) this was a good book. A little unbelievable - things are tied up too nicely in the end - but let's give the gay love stories the same kind of happily-ever-after endings the straight kids get, even if it's just every once in awhile (the odds of happiness, or unhappiness, being roughly equal no matter your persuasion). It's an interesting read, and Dylan is a genuine and interesting protagonist. ( )