SOMEWHERE IN NOWHERE

A teen grapples with his sexuality and switching schools in Gellman’s YA novel.

Simon Bugg leaves his longtime best friends (Mags, a Chinese American lesbian, and Neel, a girl-obsessed straight boy of South Asian heritage) in Columbia to begin his senior year at a new high school in Rockville, Maryland. He and his mother, Lindsey, and his stepmother, Carole, recently moved to Rockville for Lindsey’s important new job. After one of his regular anxiety attacks causes him to miss the first day of school, Simon meets Hector, a gay barista at Starbucks. The next day, Simon makes another potential friend, PJ. When Simon and PJ go out for bubble tea after school, PJ holds Simon’s hand; Simon reacts with shock, hurting PJ’s feelings. Hector becomes a mentor to Simon when the distraught younger boy vents to him about the incident and realizes that he’s gay. The novel echoes familiar queer narratives in which the protagonist struggles to come out for an ample portion of the story. The momentum sags in some sections as characters go about their normal lives and engage in mundane conversations. (Simon describes doing laundry: “I choose the gentle cycle and wash it in cold water just like Mags’ mom.”) In other sections, the pacing of the novel is much too fast—after Simon realizes that he’s gay, he immediately believes he’s in love with PJ, who quickly becomes the most important thing in Simon’s life; he stares and obsesses constantly. The teenage characters’ dialogue is also sometimes unconvincing—Simon says “OMG” and “cray-cray” in his inner monologue, and characters use phrases like “pulling my leg,” making it difficult to accept them as believable adolescents. The novel does have bright points: It offers moments of winning humor, and the sincerity of the diverse cast is endearing.

An old-fashioned queer coming-of-age story with romance, laughs, and some underwritten characters.