Very sweet, if slightly melodramatic YA novel about a teen art student in NYC who is a) trans, b) questioning his (their?) gender identity, c) caught in an ever evolving and fraught series of love triangles. I'm being a bit trite, but if you're looking for a lot of feelings about gender, and also about hot boys, this book is for you.

There is a major plot in the book about transphobic bullying by classmates, both in large, sweeping acts, and in everyday micro and macro aggressions. I found some of them really upsetting to read, and I imagine people with more experience being bullied would find them more so. However, I really liked how the author handled the topics, and allowed the main character to feel doubt and even at times despair, but also showed a vital support network both at school and in the wider queer community. It felt very much like the communities I've known and loved and hated over the years. No one gets off the hook for being transphobic, but some of the dumb shit teenagers do grow and learn over the course of the book, and it doesn't feel didactic because of that; it feels like sometimes dumb shit teenagers say dumb things.

The author is trans/non-binary and from the Caribbean, and I feel like this book is a one-person advertisement for why #OwnVoices (as much as I sometimes struggle with the movement) really works when it works. The feelings of doubt and pride and finding your voice and everything being really dramatic when you're seventeen really shine through here in a way that I don't think would have felt as real were the book by a white or cis author. The writing occasionally felt a little repetitive, but the descriptions of being young, confused, horny and just having a lot of feelings about everything shone through in a way that YA doesn't always manage to pull off.

Narrator was mostly good, but could not do an Irish accent.