Review by batbaby - One of the Boys

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batbaby 's review for:

One of the Boys by Victoria Zeller

3.5

hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

#ad I received this book for free as an arc but the opinions are my own

🏳️‍⚧️book five in the trans rights readathon 🏳️‍⚧️

I really enjoyed seeing Grace’s story, how difficult it is to not stand out when everyone wants you to. I honestly know nothing about American football so sometimes when the mc was yapping about what was happening on the field I was more like “you go girl!” rather than actually following the game fully. I enjoyed that the flashbacks to pre-out Grace were written in second person, and were posed as something that happened to Grace rather than her lived experience. Like a lot of contemporary high school books it finished a little open ended letting you see that the group had their whole life ahead of them. I enjoyed seeing grace learn to navigate balancing new and old friendships, ring newly out and facing transphobia.

However my biggest gripe with the book was how the POC characters were described. Being black and gay is a large part of Dray’s identity as is revealed by the plot later on, but the only descriptor we get when introduced to the character are about his twists. Granted it is much later expanded on by using specific by the character himself “… I dunno about being a woman, but like, as a gay Black dude? I get it.”but if the reader doesn’t know what “twists” are then the character remains amorphous, and even with that it feels strange when the tall blonde white man is described in far more detail a page over. We know that Kaiden’s child KJ is mixed race but only because a character compares the baby to a footballer Kyler Murray “ you can’t just say that ‘cause he’s Black and Korean, bro,”. It feels like the author hesitated when describing the characters that are POC, when really there is no need, and could benefit from seeing how POC writers/authors handle introducing similar characters.

Content Warnings