#questioning rep

Amber McCloud’s dream is to become cheer captain at the end of the year, but it’s an extra-tall order to be joyful and spirited when the quarterback of your team has been killed in a car accident. For both the team and the squad, watching Robbie get replaced by newcomer Jack Walsh is brutal. And when it turns out Jack is actually short for Jaclyn, all hell breaks loose.

The players refuse to be led by a girl, the cheerleaders are mad about the changes to their traditions, and the fact that Robbie’s been not only replaced but outshined by a QB who wears a sports bra has more than a few Atherton Alligators in a rage. Amber tries for some semblance of unity, but it quickly becomes clear that she’s only got a future on the squad and with her friends if she helps them take Jack down.

skip to the end of this post for my conclusion

So, I just got TSATS yesterday, I’ve had it on preorder for forever. (Yes, if you’re desperate, I am willing to take a photo of every page, I understand the struggle)

but oh my gods, I’m so happy. Yes, because of the huge amount of Solangelo adorableness, but also because of Pipes. So, quick little fact about me, I’ve been on a journey to figure out my gender and sexuality for a while. I’m genderfluid, but I only really remember whenever I feel dysphoria or euphoria, just because I’ve got bigger problems, I’m somewhere on the aroace spec, and I like people who aren’t male. I’m not really comfortable with the term ‘lesbian’, and the queer flag is very unknown to a lot of people, and ‘sapphic’ makes me feel really fem, so I don’t really like that. I’m finally more comfortable with just knowing that I’m part of the community, and I don’t have to have a label. I love finding out about new labels, and there are a lot that I identify with, but the one big part, my attraction to people, is the one thing I can’t find a label for. It’s something I struggle with, because I like to have specific instructions, specific ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It’s why I like math, because when learning the basics, there’s only one ‘correct’ answer. I thought I was aroace, but then I had my first kiss, and things got complicated.

So, when I was reading tsats, and I saw that Piper McLean was questioning her sexuality and attraction, and Nico just reassured her that that was okay, it made me so happy. I felt really truly represented. There are barely any questioning characters in media. Even teens seem to have everything figured out. So seeing that, it made me so happy. Piper is just a big ole’ queer mess, and so am I. Thank you, Rick, Mark, for this amazing book full of wholesomeness and representation. And lastly, thank you for not murdering Will.

Have you read our September #YAPrideBookClub pick, Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman? If not, you still have time to pick it up before we chat about it on 9/27 at 8pm EST on Twitter!

Summary:

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish.

Annabelle Blake fully expects this school year to be the same as every other: same teachers, same classmates, same everything. So she’s elated to discover there’s a new kid in town. To Annabelle, Bailey is a breath of fresh air. She loves hearing about their life in Seattle, meeting their loquacious (and kinda corny) parents, and hanging out at their massive house. And it doesn’t hurt that Bailey has a cute smile, nice hands (how can someone even have nice hands?) and smells really good.

Nettie Lonesome lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She’s a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don’t call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood and he turns to black sand.

And just like that, Nettie can see.

But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn’t understand what’s under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding—at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead her to find her true kin . . . if the monsters along the way don’t kill her first.

Pate Boone, a twenty-six-year-old transgender man, embarks on a new adventure when his childhood best friend, Oakley Ogden, convinces him to escape their hometown in hopes for something new.

They land in Cloverleaf, a tiny rural town in Montana, so that Oakley can care for his granny who is battling breast cancer. She pressures the two young men to enroll in a nearby college. Pate immediately becomes enthralled with Maybelle, a young, vivacious freshman to whom he fears revealing his transgender identity. But there are others who accept Pate immediately, like Stormy. An outdoorsy, rugged freshman, Stormy warns Pate away from Maybelle, but Pate’s too infatuated to heed these warnings.

Everyone thinks they know Jewel Van Hanen. Heiress turned actress turned social media darling who created the massively popular video-sharing app, Golden Rule.

After mysteriously disappearing for a year, Jewel makes her dramatic return with an announcement: she has chosen a few lucky Golden Rule users to spend an unforgettable weekend at her private estate. But once they arrive, Jewel ingeniously flips the script: the guests are now players in an elaborate estate-wide game. And she’s tailored every challenge and obstacle to test whether they have what it takes to win–at any cost.

Rule One: Your loyalty is to the case.

Amateur detective Pepper Blouse has always held true to this rule, even if it meant pushing people away. But when the results of Pepper’s latest case cost her any hope of the girl she likes returning her feelings, she decides that maybe she should lay low for a while.

That is, until her Great Aunt Florence passes away under mysterious circumstances. And even though her dad insists there’s nothing to investigate, Pepper can’t just ignore rule fourteen: Trust your gut.