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I'm gonna go ahead and voice the unpopular opinion here: I did not like this book.

Sure, this may appear to be a really good book to introduce teens to trans protagonists, but in my opinion is does more harm than good as it advises that an acceptable narrative towards trans teens is to batter them with your misconceptions until you grow enough to understand and finally behave like a decent human being.

Honestly, I would have disliked Dylan just as much had he been so horrible to anyone. He's a large boy. At seventeen years old, he's already able to go and buy alcohol without getting carded. He has hair all over his body. The kids at school have nicknamed him Beast.

Then he comes off a roof, breaks his leg and needs to go in for a group counselling session, which is where he meets Jamie.

Even before I disliked Dylan as a character, I thought that the beginning and set up of the story was a little bit weak. But then he meets Jamie, tunes out during the part where she announces that she's trans to the group, misses references that his mum and Jamie repeatedly make to the fact that she's trans, and then somehow it's her fault when he finally realises just who he's been kissing.

The blatant misgendering that occurs from this point is only one of the things that I took exception to.

Another is the part where his mum, who had been so amazing up till that point, makes a complete departure from character and blames all of Dylan's behavioural issues on Jamie for being a bad influence on him for no other plot reason that I could see other than her being trans. Never mind that he 'fell' off the roof that ended him up in counselling before he even met Jamie...

Dylan also has rage issues.

His mum has a tracking app on his phone that she lies about.

Dylan blames the fact that he's so horrible to Jamie on the fact that he's been 'waiting on a sign' from his dead father that it's actually okay for him to kiss someone like Jamie.

It seemed like this was going to be a young adult Beauty and the Beast retelling, and I see some reviews that stand by that, but I don't understand how any writer of LGBT fiction could be so unaware or uncaring of the tropes that exist all around trans acceptance narratives in their attempt to write this Beast's story.

You know, the more I list out problems I found with this novel, the more I realise it needs to go down to one star. I almost put down this book multiple times, but needed to actually see if the book redeemed itself by the very end.

It didn't. I think that the only thing I could have accepted after the rest of what happened would have been Dylan and Jamie putting aside any hope for a romance between them and just being friends. Why did they need to be pushed into a romantic relationship in the end when Dylan's being with Jamie was so dependant on what other people thought, and Jamie's own self esteem didn't seem to matter to anyone at all. I wanted to curl around her and reassure her that everything would be fine if she just got away from all these toxic people in her life.

I will say that the characterisation of Jamie as a young trans woman was the one perfect depiction of the story.