Reviews with content warning for Hate crime - Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

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Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

7 reviews

i_am_gay_and_here_2's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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halaagmod's review

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emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Admittedly, I don't read very many stories that have transgender characters. Not for lack of wanting to, mind you, but because even though more stories than every are being written with us in them, the number of quality trans books—the kind that don't stereotype our existence or water down our identities just to our transness—is unfortunately still very, very low, even for own-voices fiction.

Surprisingly enough, despite being written by a cis author a little over a decade ago (usually a sign of caution), Beautiful Music for Ugly Children is a complete breath of fresh air. No matter what was being thrown at him, Gabe stayed as Gabe, and he's presented to the reader with his own person with unique dreams, interests, goals, and emotions. You don't forget that he's trans, but his transness is not the only thing that matters or drives the plot—his friends, his family, his show and connection with music are all just as important, just as fleshed out and dynamic despite the fragility and heartache that comes as an ingrained part of transition. It's absolutely brilliant and it's shocking how well that Mills is able to capture the trans experience and get into the mind of a teenage boy struggling with his identity and self-worth. I needed that as a young trans kid.

Of course, it's far from a perfect book, and I definitely understand the criticisms coming from other trans readers—much of the information over a decade after publication is very much outdated, it does feature many of the tropes I do tend to loathe from trans-centered books, and some of the language used in the book might offend some (though, to be honest, it's very accurate for a small, Midwestern town like Gabe's). But in my opinion, it doesn't exactly need to be perfect to tell this kind of story. I wish there were more books like this one.

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aus10england's review

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emotional funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This was quite the read!

This book came out when I was in high school, so I'm now only reading it ten years later which made it fun to reflect on how far things have come as far as trans issues go. I found the story easy to follow, but had a hard time with the dated language used, as well as how the main character was treated. I l I don't tend to wish for books to be longer, but I think the story could have benefited for being a bit more flushed out and fully realized. For example, LOVED how radio played into the story, but I think they could have gone farther with it.

I wouldn't consider this "queer required reading", but I think it'll be interesting to look back on this book decades down the line to truly see how far we've come!

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