David Piper has always been an outsider. His parents think he's gay. The school bully thinks he's a freak. Only his two best friends know the real truth: David wants to be a girl.
On the first day at his new school Leo Denton has one goal: to be invisible. Attracting the attention of the most beautiful girl in his class is definitely not part of that plan. When Leo stands up for David in a fight, an unlikely friendship forms. But things are about to get messy. Because at Eden Park School secrets have a funny habit of not staying secret for long , and soon everyone knows that Leo used to be a girl.
As David prepares to come out to his family and transition into life as a girl and Leo wrestles with figuring out how to deal with people who try to define him through his history, they find in each other the friendship and support they need to navigate life as transgender teens as well as the courage to decide for themselves what normal really means.
Rating: 4 Stars
I wasn't sure what to expect from The Art of Being Normal. I picked it up as I had decided to read more book from the LGBTQ+ genre this year (in general, really).
I'm glad that I did so, as this was both what I expected from the description, and nothing like what I expected. The writing was much more engaging that I thought it would be. Not that I thought it would be bad, you understand, but my mind really responded to the way this book was written. It was so happy to pick this book up each day, even when I knew something not so good was about to happen.
The characters were unique to me. They were special in that I had never read a character portrayed in just that way and they gave me a lot to think about. David and Leo are characters that I wish I knew in real life. They felt like real people that just so happened to be made of paper and ink, rather than fictional ones.
I was saddened when things ended, but I was more saddened when I realized that there are similar things going on everyday to people I may or may not know. People who've been born into the wrong body who are having difficult times because they aren't being accepted, because people with skewed view points, aren't seeing past their own noses to what another person might be feeling in their minds and their hearts.
I hope to read more from Lisa Williamson soon. This book has made me a big fan.
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