3 stars
While I can see that this book would be so meaningful and important for young people questioning their identities (and maybe sexuality too), I'm not really the target audience for this book.

Spoiler section summary:
Felix was too young/immature for me, his emotions too wild. Felix catfishing Declan was a shitty thing to do, and he hurt multiple people as well as being hurt. This book I think would be great for a young person questioning a lot about themselves, but overall was a repetitive, 'Meh' story for me.


This is maybe one of the first books I've read where I'm suddenly feeling my age? I just was sort of startled by how much drinking and pot and school skipping there was, and wandering all over NYC. I know that makes me seem old and conservative and small town, but still. And the language between the characters was frequently... idk how realistic it was, but I thought it was goofily pretentious? To be posting comments on Instagram about the media of art representing emotions... I've never had artsy friends so maybe I'm way off, but it seemed "put on".

I think one of the main themes in this book was realizing how everyone deserves love, and the finding/feeling of love and being IN love. But I think this theme wasn't done very well--Felix spends a lot of time invested in his "revenge plot" and the feelings both he and Declan are declaring they're starting to feel happened without enough substance for me.

Felix seemed SO YOUNG to me, I think he was just barely 17?? But his emotions were all over the place, he went from CONVINCED to CONFUSED in 0.2 seconds. He went from depression to elation fast enough to give me whiplash. I remember enough of high school to remember feeling like my emotions had hit the peaks of my capacity, but I don't remember this capriciousness, which was mostly functioning to annoy me in this book.

I thought it was crappy for Felix to try to catfish Declan, I thought it was crappy for Felix to not reveal himself or at least stop catfishing Declan once he had the information he wanted, I thought it was crappy for Felix to basically try out a relationship with Declan as if he was borrowing a library book, easily returned/discarded when he acknowledged his own feelings. Declan got the shittiest plot in the whole book, poor thing.

While I liked how Felix was still questioning his identity and how supportive people were of that, I thought it was pretty cliche that he felt he needed to be labeled and find the perfect one. And that two pages after Bex says it's okay to not know and it may take years to figure out, Felix scrolls down a list on tumblr and finds the magic word that's perfect for him.
I liked the way Felix and Ezra's relationship was laid out, how Ezra clearly was a huge support and advocate for Felix. I liked when Felix realizes that he has feelings for Ezra.
I thought that Felix winning the gallery display at the end was cliche.
There was a lot of revelations throughout the book of people Felix considered acquaintances/friends being actually trans-phobic to varying degrees of awful, and I thought that was done really well.