Carey Parker dreams of being a diva, and bringing the house down with song. But despite their talent, emotional scars from an incident with a homophobic classmate and their grandmother’s spiraling dementia make it harder and harder for Carey to find their voice.
Then Carey meets Cris, a singer/guitarist who makes Carey feel seen for the first time in their life. With the rush of a promising new romantic relationship, Carey finds the confidence to audition for the role of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, in the school musical, setting off a chain reaction of prejudice by Carey’s tormentor and others in the school. It’s up to Carey, Cris, and their friends to defend their rights–and they refuse to be silenced.
I don’t think I completely understood what I was getting myself into before I picked up this book. I kinda just saw the words “genderqueer singer” and was sold.
Which is a lesson in fully reading the description before I pick up a book.
It’s not that this book is terrible. I’m just so tired of constantly reading stories over and over again about trans teens having to fight to have their identities respected. Every time I get excited to see a trans character in a book, I’m suddenly bombarded with talks of protests and hate crimes.
For once in my life, I wanna read a story with a trans main character who doesn’t have to deal with transphobia.
That doesn’t mean that this book isn’t valid, or that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If someone out there feels empowered and more confident in their gender identity because of this book, great! If this book helps even one person, then it has accomplished what it set out to do.
However, I largely did not have fun with this book.
Let’s talk about the writing style in general, which I found to be too fast paced and not as descriptive as I would have liked. By page 50 of this book, our main character, Carey, begins a relationship with a different character. I’m not sure how readers are expected to care for this character and relationship by page 50, but I certainly did not. In fact, I was a little weirded out by the fact that Cris was practically thrown at me and how I was expected to like him simply because Carey likes him.
There were also certain moments talked about in the book that I wanted to see played out instead, such as the text commenting that Phoebe has been over to Carey’s house multiple times to practice for the play without ever showing a single time Phoebe was at Carey’s house. The book referencing these moments without showing them made me feel like I was missing things, which is not a fun feeling to have as a reader.
The majority of this book was depressing, yet somehow I was hit with emotional whiplash between different depressing topics. The book never really lets up and allows readers to have a moment to process what is happening, instead moving from one topic to another without breaks. Not finished crying over Carey’s beloved grandmother dying? Too bad! Let’s start a riot because one of Carey’s teachers is homophobic!
As much as I can appreciate how this book had some topics it wanted to discuss and tries to bring a little trans appreciation into the world, I hate depressing stories. This book was definitely not for me.
KiiitasticBooks 