SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF

Queer teens in the north of England start an activist club and organize their town’s first Pride event in Quirke’s debut.

Imogen Quinn, a bisexual 16-year-old who uses she/they pronouns, is dismayed by the inaccessibility—an inescapable sensory overload—at the Pride festival in a nearby city. They decide to invite Oliver Armstrong, the school soccer team’s openly gay captain, to join them in creating the Ardenpool Youth Activist Society. At first, parentified Ollie, who helps care for his younger sister and is dealing with his parents’ recent announcement that they’re divorcing, agrees only begrudgingly. But eventually Imogen and the club genuinely grow on him. Though the book has a romance subplot, the friendship between white-presenting Imogen and Ollie, who’s white and Japanese, is, refreshingly, the primary relationship. The club encounters realistic setbacks: a town council that doesn’t follow through on its environmental promises, an unsupportive (and possibly transphobic) headteacher, and the school leadership’s reallocation of the funds the club members raised. Imogen is autistic, and fellow club member Louisa, who’s Black, has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and often uses a wheelchair. The author heavily explores accessibility needs for queer disabled people, and although the topic and information conveyed are welcome, the writing occasionally veers into a didactic tone when discussing specifics. Both Imogen and Ollie have complicated relationships with their fathers, and both make headway in realistically incremental ways.

Accessible queer joy.