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A review by jugglingpup
Romeo for Real by Markus Harwood-Jones
1.0
To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.
I got an ARC of this book.
So this is the companion book to Just Julian. I am not impressed by this cover at all. Remember that Romeo is supposed be a closeted gay and no one has any idea he is gay. I see this and my first thought is he is a drag queen or wants to be. So it is safe to say that I did not imagine Romeo looking like this at all.
The book itself was bland, boring, and I had many of the same issues as I did with the companion. This book follows Romeo’s adventures. Romeo isn’t gay when the book starts, at least he is pretty sure he isn’t. He actively gay bashes people, he was in a “relationship” with a girl for a LONG TIME even. The girl turns out to be half of the couple hosting a queer apartment warming party where he meets Julien. For someone who isn’t gay and has really homophobic friends Romeo sure did kiss Julian in a pretty public place pretty quickly. Then he came out to his “ex-girlfriend” (I keep putting this in quotes since the further you get in the book it is made clear there never was any relationship at all) the next morning who gives him a list of super queer places in town. He then immediately goes into one where he finds Julian again because Romeo has no idea how bookshelves work. They again kiss in public.
The whole book has a super rushed timeline, which I get fits with the source material. The issue besides falling so passionately in love with someone in three days is Romeo was raised Catholic, his dad is abusive, and his friends are homophobic. Why would he come out and suddenly be like “yup, I’m totally gay” so quickly. There would be more angst or at least more substance.
This book is also full of 2-D characters, but if you combine the two books some of the characters feel a bit more fleshed out. My major issue (outside of transphobia which I will get to shortly) is the books have drastically different dialogue and actions. It is annoying. I read it and went “Wow, I remember him saying something totally different”, so I went back to check. Yup, totally different. Some scenes made more sense based just on how they were written and some made less sense. In this book they had sex, in the other they just cuddled. If books are going to be companions, I expect them to you know work together to tell one story. This wouldn’t have worked as one book because of how repetitive it was, but if it was edited together it could have easily been a much better book than what these two were.
So onto the transphobia which also runs rampant in this book too, despite this book supposedly giving you courage to be yourself. The transphobic incident at the party where a trans girl was outed as a “man” happened, but at least this time someone was like “that’s shitty” for a second THE NEXT DAY. The entire party was an exercise in how much transphobic language I could handle. Romeo was mildly the narrator so part of it is on him, but this is told in the third person so most of the shame is on the author. The transphobic character was back, but played a bigger role. She told Romeo and his friend stories about how she loved “tricking” boys into having sex with her. I am just so pissed that this character exists. That is one of the number one transphobic things that people see on Jerry Springer, which should have been a “wait a second” moment for the author. Instead here is one of the worst representations of trans people in YA I have ever seen. I must point out that the author bio mentions the author went on a trip to learn more about trans people. Clearly he did not learn enough if this was his enlightened state.
Please, do not buy this book for a trans person to read. It is damaging. There is so much transphobia, so much homophobia, so much violence and abuse. This book has so many movie parts that are never addressed that it can send the complete wrong message to younger readers. For example it isn’t seen as bad or wrong that Julian cuts himself. It is never discussed beyond that he does it and he hides it.
I got an ARC of this book.
So this is the companion book to Just Julian. I am not impressed by this cover at all. Remember that Romeo is supposed be a closeted gay and no one has any idea he is gay. I see this and my first thought is he is a drag queen or wants to be. So it is safe to say that I did not imagine Romeo looking like this at all.
The book itself was bland, boring, and I had many of the same issues as I did with the companion. This book follows Romeo’s adventures. Romeo isn’t gay when the book starts, at least he is pretty sure he isn’t. He actively gay bashes people, he was in a “relationship” with a girl for a LONG TIME even. The girl turns out to be half of the couple hosting a queer apartment warming party where he meets Julien. For someone who isn’t gay and has really homophobic friends Romeo sure did kiss Julian in a pretty public place pretty quickly. Then he came out to his “ex-girlfriend” (I keep putting this in quotes since the further you get in the book it is made clear there never was any relationship at all) the next morning who gives him a list of super queer places in town. He then immediately goes into one where he finds Julian again because Romeo has no idea how bookshelves work. They again kiss in public.
The whole book has a super rushed timeline, which I get fits with the source material. The issue besides falling so passionately in love with someone in three days is Romeo was raised Catholic, his dad is abusive, and his friends are homophobic. Why would he come out and suddenly be like “yup, I’m totally gay” so quickly. There would be more angst or at least more substance.
This book is also full of 2-D characters, but if you combine the two books some of the characters feel a bit more fleshed out. My major issue (outside of transphobia which I will get to shortly) is the books have drastically different dialogue and actions. It is annoying. I read it and went “Wow, I remember him saying something totally different”, so I went back to check. Yup, totally different. Some scenes made more sense based just on how they were written and some made less sense. In this book they had sex, in the other they just cuddled. If books are going to be companions, I expect them to you know work together to tell one story. This wouldn’t have worked as one book because of how repetitive it was, but if it was edited together it could have easily been a much better book than what these two were.
So onto the transphobia which also runs rampant in this book too, despite this book supposedly giving you courage to be yourself. The transphobic incident at the party where a trans girl was outed as a “man” happened, but at least this time someone was like “that’s shitty” for a second THE NEXT DAY. The entire party was an exercise in how much transphobic language I could handle. Romeo was mildly the narrator so part of it is on him, but this is told in the third person so most of the shame is on the author. The transphobic character was back, but played a bigger role. She told Romeo and his friend stories about how she loved “tricking” boys into having sex with her. I am just so pissed that this character exists. That is one of the number one transphobic things that people see on Jerry Springer, which should have been a “wait a second” moment for the author. Instead here is one of the worst representations of trans people in YA I have ever seen. I must point out that the author bio mentions the author went on a trip to learn more about trans people. Clearly he did not learn enough if this was his enlightened state.
Please, do not buy this book for a trans person to read. It is damaging. There is so much transphobia, so much homophobia, so much violence and abuse. This book has so many movie parts that are never addressed that it can send the complete wrong message to younger readers. For example it isn’t seen as bad or wrong that Julian cuts himself. It is never discussed beyond that he does it and he hides it.