Week 38 Review: Symptoms of Being Human

From Goodreads:
The first thing you're going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl?

Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. The thing is . . . Riley isn't exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in uber-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley's so-called "normal" life.

On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it's REALLY like to be a gender-fluid teenager. But just as Riley's starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley's real identity, threatening exposure. Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything. 

My Review:
So this book, I just absolutely loved it! I'd been having something of a bad day, and then I started to read this book. I even wrote a blog post about it, here! That was how fantastic this book was for me, and I hadn't even finished it! Have now, and it was just so great!

This book is about Riley, who's gender fluid, which is about identity, not the physical body, though in Riley's case (and probably others, but we don't have any others) it manifested itself there, from clothing choices, to postures.

I really enjoyed Riley's blogging, there was a style there, with the music, telling of the feelings, and it sparked a lot comments and followers, and even a pretty horrible incident. I didn't like the one comment, that Riley wasn't qualified to give that advice, and that Riley should be sued. Except that Riley didn't tell the girl to go home, she just said that her parents might have regretted their words. But it was just a pretty sucky situation!

Really enjoyed Riley with Solo, and with Bec! They were a big part of Riley's life, the two people in the new school that Riley connected to, though in different ways. And while I thought Mike/Michelle was Bec's dad, well, Bec was connected to the LGBT community in a different way.

I want to talk about the ending, but it was pretty spoiler-y and since this book doesn't come out for a long while, I'll just say that the ending, while having some hard parts, was just perfect, and a great ending to a book that I loved so much!

Author: Jeff Garvin
Read: September 16th, 2015
Source: Edelweiss
Reason Why: Sounded really fantastic, and it's a DAC Book and a SAC 2015 Book, and it's going to be a WoW Book!
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Expected Publication: February 2nd 2016

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars