Tell them they're talented and they have potential (especially if you're an artist too, but either way counts).

Not only is the queer representation commendable- the fact Lee doesn't make their relationship 'clean', so to say, but shows Monty and Percy taking care of each other at their worst and when it's not all pretty hand holding and kissing, which makes it seem far more real and we definitely need that representation, because that's how life and relationships are-, but the way trauma is handled just baffled me.

I didn't read reviews of it before picking it up, nor did I look up trigger warnings, so I was definitely a bit hit in the solar plexus with all the talk of abuse that... Let's just say hits home in a way.

But the representation is so GOOD. So many authors put abusive people in main characters' past and lives to give them a tragic backstory of sorts, and then never mention it again or handle it very poorly, either by making the traumatized character a horrible person and then completely excusing it with no accountability, or they make them a poor little innocent baby.

But Lee handles it in a way I don't think I've ever seen before, or at least this one resonated with me far more than other executions of it. We see that he's absolutely terrified of his father, which, regardless of how you think or talk about them, is always the core emotions related to an abuser. We see the toll it takes not just on Monty, who has suicidal thoughts and flashbacks and panic attacks, but also on Percy who has had to watch his best friend struggle for years and slowly dig a deeper and deeper hole to try to escape his father, knowing that there is nothing he can do without it being useless, potentially hurting Monty even more and taking him away from him, essentially leaving Monty alone.

And trauma affects absolutely every single little thing in Monty's life, from the way he think about himself to the way he thinks about others to the way he acts, thinks, feels, which is how trauma works. It's not this one time thing that pops up every six months, it shapes you as a person in every way imaginable.

And the book holds him accountable for his actions but it's still so kind to him that it nearly brought me to tears. How one of Pascals grandma's tells him there is life beyond survival (which so often doesn't feel true when you've been completely concentrated on said survival- we even see Monty panicking when he realized he has absolutely no idea what he really wants to do). How Scipio sees he's afraid and teaches him to defend himself. How he tells him straight up that he's not worthless and useless and that he's not nothing.

That one word resonates so much with me, because that kind of abuse convinces you that you're not worth anything, that you're a failure, a disappointment, that you'll never be enough. That you're nothing. And here was this man, who's been through his fair share of mistreatment and abuse, who didn't even really like Monty at first but who in that moment saw a terrified, hurt child, telling him that he's got worth and that he is someone.

Tears my heart straight out of my chest.