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A review by heathersnerdyworld
Birthday by Meredith Russo
4.0
This is such an important read. I cried at least 3 times due to the challenges trans youth face. Most importantly this is an own voices novel. I feel like a LGBTQ+ novel has not made me understand the internal and struggles the way this novel did. That being said I have not read every own voices LGBTQ+ novel out there, just that Birthday is the one that impacted my understanding the most. The struggles of mental health, bullying, self hate, and the physical limitations of being in the wrong body are all laid out and the story feels extremely real.
There are 2 reasons this book is 4 stars. It took me a long time to get into the novel, and I feel this ties into my second reason, I found Eric's perspective to be the more generic and bland jock stereotypical POV we've seen time and time again. It took away from some of the more impactful moments with Morgan for me, though there are times it complimented Morgan's POV and the story well.
There are 2 reasons this book is 4 stars. It took me a long time to get into the novel, and I feel this ties into my second reason, I found Eric's perspective to be the more generic and bland jock stereotypical POV we've seen time and time again. It took away from some of the more impactful moments with Morgan for me, though there are times it complimented Morgan's POV and the story well.