Before we even begin I don’t want to hear anything about the urchin who shall not be named also reading this book. She had good taste in a book one time. Good for her. Well not book, it’s actually graphic memoir. A tale many of us out there are probably all too familiar with: young gay realizes she is in fact a young gay and picks the least available person she possibly could to crush on. At an all girls summer camp.
Maggie Thrash is the shit, first of all, and writes cool stuff. Her drawings are also pretty snazzy. She combined that shit together with her own gay odyssey as a teenager and boom: awesome read right here. More specifically this is about Thrash’s summer at camp where she realizes she has a massive crush on a 19 year old counselor with a reputation as the token lesbian of the woods. The counselor seems to return her interest but with serious trepidation. It builds a little when the bitchy head of the camp warns both of them to keep it professional.
There’s also a real Freaks and Geeks thing going on too thanks to some popular biotches and an intense rivalry on the shooting range between Thrash and some chick. Overall Thrash’s character comes across super well for the seemingly simplistic drawings and the story has an earned, if not totally happy ending.
And that’s enough of me pretending to be a book critic.
Read this shit. It’s great for kids out there in need of a little solidarity. Coming out can be an embarrassing and troubling time. Bee-leeev-meeee. And seeing Thrash be so super open about it (puns) while knowing the super cool human being she grew up to be is crazy awesome. And the memoir is funny as shit. We need more YA stuff like this for everyone out there that actually has character and isn’t some cookie cutter John Green tragi-romance complete with a manic pixie dream girl.
So go buy it, go read it. Tell me how much you loved it and how I was right, otherwise don’t say anything at all.
I’m out.
