OUT OF BLUE COMES GREEN

A young trans man looks for love and acceptance.

The protagonist, who’s deadnamed Kayla and often goes by Kay or Nate, doesn’t have it easy. He wants to be more out and proud at his high school, but after cutting his hair and playing frontman in his band, Blue, he becomes the target of unrelenting bullying from both family and peers. He develops an all-consuming crush on classmate Christine after she mistakes him for a cis boy, and if that’s not bad enough, his beloved dog, Sasha, recently died. The high school senior, who reads white, struggles constantly with feeling masculine enough, consciously trying to embody the worst of patriarchal gender roles while simultaneously feeling uncomfortable with them. In a plot crowded with coincidences, he manages to lie his way into a part-time job at an animal shelter, starts dating a new girl with a rainbow “love is love is love is love” button on her backpack, and machinates to try to get his band the spot playing at prom. Despite a heavy reliance on texting and social media, this feels like a story from an earlier time: The teen’s Minneapolis-area high school seems to not have anything resembling a gay-straight alliance or queer community, his knowledge about transmasculine identities wavers inconsistently, and the repetition of toxic male stereotypes feels out of place.

The struggles and successes in this novel will appeal to the angstiest of queer teens.