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A review by hollandward
Between Perfect and Real by Ray Stoeve
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
I think we come to books for different reasons, and this book just didn’t serve me in the way I expected it to or wanted it to. I wouldn’t say anything in this book is explicitly bad. More like, there was good stuff, and there was ehhh stuff. First, the good:
Dean’s path towards realizing his transness and exploring his transness felt very real and honest in a way I hadn’t seen before in a book, and I enjoy that bit of it immensely. The scene where he tries on binders for the first time, for example, was a great bit--and one that I myself had gone through and found myself nodding along to the narration.
Centering the story around Romeo and Juliet was a fun thematic choice as well. Taking the sort of hallmark of cis-het romance and flipping it on its head with a trans lead, and specifically using a play we’ve all probably read in high school: a good call on the author’s part. It felt right.
The cast of characters is diverse, which is always good to see. In every YA book I read nowadays there’s always a few lines that are ripped right from Tumblr discourse and feel out-of-place in the narrative: coming across less like genuine moments of dialogue or narration and more like the author feels the need to plainly state their stance on Today’s Issues, for whatever motive. It annoys me, frankly, but this book did not have as many as some I’ve read recently, and for that I am grateful.
And now, the ehh:
The bullying bit--specifically the act of transphobic violence in the hallway--was a touch too much for me. Not as a “this is unbelievable and wouldn’t actually happen” thing, but more just because I had been hoping this book would surprise me, and in some ways this was a very predictable path. It’s that odd space of knowing that, yes, the threat of violence hangs over us as trans people every day, AND the media is dominated by stories of physical abuse towards trans people because they sell better. Again, we come to books for different reasons, and this did not align with what I hoped for in the novel.
In comic book theory, there’s this idea that the less detailed a face is, the more easily a person can see themselves in the narrative. The fewer details, the more we’ll project, until the plain smiley face becomes a vessel for ourselves. In my reading of this book, Dean is that smiley face. Apart from being trans, he isn’t given much in terms of personality, likes, or dislikes. He loves theater. He loves Zoe. He loves David Bowie. He likes...coffeeshops, I guess? And that’s all I’ve got. With so little to go off of, he’s the perfect mannequin onto which readers can project themselves. I think for a lot of readers, that’s a huge selling point: “he’s just like me! I can see myself clearly in him and his journey!” Love it, very cool, AND that didn’t work for me. I wanted Dean to be….well, Dean! I wanted him to be his own person, a living, breathing inhabitant of this world. I didn’t get that. I value flawed main characters and narrators. And for me, Dean was really lacking that key element to his character. All of the secondary characters around him are nuanced, flawed individuals who Dean gets to call out--whether internally or externally--for their problematic behavior or statements. Every time Zoe, for example, says something questionable, we get a full breakdown in Dean’s head of why what she said was wrong. But we don’t see any of that with Dean. Not necessarily because Dean is The Unproblematic Fave (though there is that undertone frequently, that Dean just seems to know better than all of his friends and colleagues, and is always dealing with THEIR mistakes and never the other way around, etc), but because Dean just doesn’t get to do much of anything except be a trans guy. I wanted to see him with flaws, making mistakes, doing the wrong things.
The title of this book assumes that one of the big arcs in this book would be Dean’s realization that the world is nuanced. People and experiences are rarely wholly good or bad: instead, we exist in this tenuous, ever-changing space, the “between” of it. And I think this book almost makes it there, but falls short. We come so close to these powerful moments of making the distinction between the perfect--which Dean wants--and the real. Zoe, for example, who Dean pedestals as perfect throughout most of the book, reveals her humanness in her imperfect handling of Dean’s transness. But instead of pushing beyond a black-and-white value assessment of her worth and “goodness” as a person to acknowledge the nuance of people and their capacity for growth and learning, she’s just...dropped. Called “problematic” by everyone involved, and never spoken of again except to reiterate that she was wrong and bad. Zoe was wrong, certainly. Her impact caused Dean harm. Dean is not obligated to forgive her. However in a story titled “Between Perfect and Real”, it is expected that there would be some discussion of how assuming perfection leads to heartbreak, to disappointment, to damaged expectations. The field was wide open, the game-winning goal right in front of us, and yet the book didn’t make the shot. By the end of it all, I was left wanting. I could see all the missed chances to give us that something real.
I suppose I myself entered this book with expectations closer to perfection--it had received such glowing praise, so many anecdotes from other trans people of how this book was amazing, how they sobbed through it all, how this book was The Moment--and instead of perfection I found something closer to “real”: a good idea, some good scenes, but missing what I was hoping for: nuance, complexity, surprises, growth.
So, overall, not my favorite book I’ve read. Glad it exists, but it just didn’t give me what I was hoping for.
Dean’s path towards realizing his transness and exploring his transness felt very real and honest in a way I hadn’t seen before in a book, and I enjoy that bit of it immensely. The scene where he tries on binders for the first time, for example, was a great bit--and one that I myself had gone through and found myself nodding along to the narration.
Centering the story around Romeo and Juliet was a fun thematic choice as well. Taking the sort of hallmark of cis-het romance and flipping it on its head with a trans lead, and specifically using a play we’ve all probably read in high school: a good call on the author’s part. It felt right.
The cast of characters is diverse, which is always good to see. In every YA book I read nowadays there’s always a few lines that are ripped right from Tumblr discourse and feel out-of-place in the narrative: coming across less like genuine moments of dialogue or narration and more like the author feels the need to plainly state their stance on Today’s Issues, for whatever motive. It annoys me, frankly, but this book did not have as many as some I’ve read recently, and for that I am grateful.
And now, the ehh:
In comic book theory, there’s this idea that the less detailed a face is, the more easily a person can see themselves in the narrative. The fewer details, the more we’ll project, until the plain smiley face becomes a vessel for ourselves. In my reading of this book, Dean is that smiley face. Apart from being trans, he isn’t given much in terms of personality, likes, or dislikes. He loves theater. He loves Zoe. He loves David Bowie. He likes...coffeeshops, I guess? And that’s all I’ve got. With so little to go off of, he’s the perfect mannequin onto which readers can project themselves. I think for a lot of readers, that’s a huge selling point: “he’s just like me! I can see myself clearly in him and his journey!” Love it, very cool, AND that didn’t work for me. I wanted Dean to be….well, Dean! I wanted him to be his own person, a living, breathing inhabitant of this world. I didn’t get that. I value flawed main characters and narrators. And for me, Dean was really lacking that key element to his character. All of the secondary characters around him are nuanced, flawed individuals who Dean gets to call out--whether internally or externally--for their problematic behavior or statements. Every time Zoe, for example, says something questionable, we get a full breakdown in Dean’s head of why what she said was wrong. But we don’t see any of that with Dean. Not necessarily because Dean is The Unproblematic Fave (though there is that undertone frequently, that Dean just seems to know better than all of his friends and colleagues, and is always dealing with THEIR mistakes and never the other way around, etc), but because Dean just doesn’t get to do much of anything except be a trans guy. I wanted to see him with flaws, making mistakes, doing the wrong things.
The title of this book assumes that one of the big arcs in this book would be Dean’s realization that the world is nuanced. People and experiences are rarely wholly good or bad: instead, we exist in this tenuous, ever-changing space, the “between” of it. And I think this book almost makes it there, but falls short. We come so close to these powerful moments of making the distinction between the perfect--which Dean wants--and the real.
I suppose I myself entered this book with expectations closer to perfection--it had received such glowing praise, so many anecdotes from other trans people of how this book was amazing, how they sobbed through it all, how this book was The Moment--and instead of perfection I found something closer to “real”: a good idea, some good scenes, but missing what I was hoping for: nuance, complexity, surprises, growth.
So, overall, not my favorite book I’ve read. Glad it exists, but it just didn’t give me what I was hoping for.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia and Bullying
Moderate: Emotional abuse