Language: PG-13 (13 swears, 0 ‘f’); Mature Content: PG-13 (frequent mentions of sex happening between teenage boys, sex talk without description, alcoholic mother); Violence: PG-13 (fighting and bullying)
BUYING ADVISORY: HS – OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Things are different for boys who like boys. For Anthony Stevenson, it has a significant impact on his relationships with three different boys. Charlie - homophobic and mad at the world, Jake - gay and unapologetic, and Josh - straight and new in town (It’s not clear from the text where this contemporary story takes place, or what ethnicity the characters are). Anthony speculates on masculinity, queerness, and sex through really compelling redacted prose as everything eventually comes to a violent conclusion.
Ness uses such an interesting technique, using black bars to censor sex and swear words on the page. You know in horror films, your imagination is always so much worse than whatever monster is on screen? The same can be said of swears, sex scenes, and sex discussions that are redacted. I was going crazy imagining what words worked in that context. The illustrations from Tea Bendix are sketchy, but in the best way. They seem to perfectly capture the mutable nature of teenagers' thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, the story itself was heartbreaking. Given the nature of the content and the frequency in such a short book, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this for a school library, even though I enjoyed reading it.
Kiera, #bookswithbeddes
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