A review by breadedbookpages
How to Be Remy Cameron by Julian Winters

4.0

THIS IS COMING OUT ON MY BIRTHDAY! WOW! Woooow!
Read August 6th.

Alriiiiighto!!! Review time, friendos. I say, to the no people at all watching out for my reviews!!!

Let's start with: This book gave me intense feelings. it deals with being labelled against one's own wishes. and i'm not talking about misgendering or anything, but like, being forced to acknowledge you're different from people. like, when someone told five year old remy he was "different" because he is "adopted" that hit hard because it made me think of my own ways of how i was labelled as "girly" and "prudish" because of my hijab and my interests.

remy's conflict over how it all affects him without him even choosing it hit me hard because i went through the same ordeal of being thought of as "something" when i didn't know who i was. i resented people who made up their minds about me without getting to know me. telling me i wasn't persian enough because i didn't speak the language. telling me i couldn't be nonbinary because well, look at me, i wear hijab and i am so overwhelmingly feminine.

when i chose none of this.

i didn't choose to have my body, or the labels. i sometimes wish i could remove the labels i adopted two years ago. i wish i could remove them from my brain even but today, as i read how to be Remy cameron, i was struck with how my labels are mine. they're mine to define even if they existed before and they'd go on to exist after i'm gone.

there is a powerful message in this book that touched deep in my heart.

one point there: at one point, a character's sister tells Remy that the character is demisexual when Remy didn't know. She outed him. i didn't know how to feel esp because the character never had a single word spoken in the book. it kind of took something from him esp since the book focuses a lot, remy focuses a lot, on not outing Ian who comes to term with how comfortable he is with being out.