Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Felix Ever After is a young adult romance novel by Kacen Callender.  

I read this slight book after reading some hefty tomes and it was delightful to just whip through the pages. Felix is a normal teenager - he has a best friend named Ezra, a problematic bully at school, wants to be an artist and is busy working and worrying about his portfolio so he can get into the college of his dreams, and his family life is complicated. Oh, and he's trans. And gay. Or maybe not? His gender and sexuality seem to be fluid and figuring it out is hard, especially when his father doesn't always fully support him.

What I liked about this book is that Callender started the book with an entire chapter before coming out and saying that Felix is trans. There are some clues and foreshadowing, but if you didn't know what this book was about before you started reading, you might be taken by surprise. And I like this treatment of Felix as just a "normal" teenager with "normal" problems and "normal" friendships. I thought it was a clever move. 

I thought some of it was kind of didactic and preachy, but I think that's pretty appropriate for the age, actually. When Felix goes to a discussion group, I thought the leader was particularly talk-y, but then I realized that it would probably actually be like that, especially if you were a teenager.  So, maybe not how adults would talk to other adults, but maybe how some adults would talk to teens.  

I thought it was a smartly written, sweet novel about a young person discovering who they are and what they want in life.  4/5 stars

Thing I Looked Up:

Judith I and the Head of Holofernes: 1901 Klimt oil painting

By Gustav Klimt - http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/tentoonstellingen/klimt-%E2%99%A6-schiele, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70961521

Line of Note:

"I look at you and wish I could be a teenager again. I know that things aren't perfect," he says, nodding, "and there are still hardships, but don't forget to enjoy these years. Live. Live them for the people who didn't get to enjoy being a teenager. For the people who never lived past being a teenager." (page 277)

I struggle with this. There's a line earlier in the book about how the life expectancy for a trans person of color is in the 30s (here's a source for that, although the stats seem a bit murky). Regardless, the fact that the statistic seems believable is quite telling about the quality of life that many trans people have. And I understand that the quote above is supposed to be sort of cheerleading and is crucial if you think you're going to have a short life, I also think it's putting a lot of pressure on teenagers. They don't have to live lives to replace other people's shortened lives - they just need to live their own.  Oh, I sat with this quote for a long time and still don't know what I'd say if someone said something like this to me.