A review by literarycrushes
Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey

4.0

In Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey, Acceptance Across America, an LGBGT non-profit, ranks Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. AAA assembles a hodgepodge task force of queer people to live there for 2 years to fight homophobia at its source. The concept was one of the more original ones I’ve read in recent months, and I was drawn in for the entirety of the two, 2-hour, sittings it took to read the novel.
The book frequently switches perspectives, moving from a Christian mommy blogger type, to a bisexual high schooler plotting his escape, to a man struggling with his sexuality after twenty-five years of marriage. Alternating between narratives helped move the story along, but each segment felt too brief and didn’t leave enough time to form any real attachments to individual characters. For this same reason, characterization was often boiled down to a single moment in their lives which unfortunately reduced many of them to cliches. I think that with some development of subplots (or even just following through on the ones briefly mentioned), this novel would make an excellent miniseries.