It's exciting to see a new wave of positive characters and new authors in the young adult and gay/lesbian shelves of bookstores these days, such as Love, Simon. For many years, gay novels centered around political and sexuality struggles, loneliness, the AIDS crisis. There was Armistead Maupin and classics like EM Forster's Maurice, but novels reflecting today's youth were not so prevalent. Lately these seem to be overtaking the shelves - stories where sexuality of all kinds is not an issue. It's accepted. My generation may have been a fight for equality, so the new generation can just get on with falling in love.
That said, and kudos to Tim Federle for The Great American Whatever, but I really didn't like this book.
Quinn Roberts is a sixteen year-old living in Pittsburg, dealing (or not dealing) with the death of his sister. Quinn made home movies with her - he sees life as a movie, quoting scenes and recommending films. His friend Geoff takes him to his first college party where he meets a hot guy - and Quinn falls hard for Amir, nineteen and ready to leave town shortly. Cue the drama as several dates introduce relationship obstacles and revelations about Quinn's family. Will they get it together and produce a happy ending?
I might like this book if I was younger - Quinn and Amir meet for an intense non-sexual romance and support each other's drama - but I had a hard time being around a modern teenager! Everything to Quinn is either massively underrated (I don't need to be schooled on the Ephron sisters) or tragic (like eating the wrong flavour of yogurt, tragic). His wry self-centered view sees everything as ironically humorous ("like I'm Goldie Hawn in some eighties screwball comedy"). After a while his self obsessing comes off as arrogance. Nothing against the writing which was great. Quinn is immediately identifiable - I see it in other teens, and was probably like this myself - he's just the type of person I can't stand being around.
He's only 16, give him some time.
2016 / Hardcover / 278 pages
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