Ricky

I always wished there were Judy Blume books with gay themes and this is kind of like that but a lot heavier and with more sex and drugs than you would generally expect in one of her books.

An adolescent boy in 1978 New Jersey is figuring out his sexual identity when crisis strikes. I didn't know the crisis was coming so it felt very jarring when it happened. I thought this was a gay coming-of-age story and it's sort of that, but it's also about navigating major life events and their fallout. The writing was good generally, but sometimes it seemed a little off. Especially some of the adult dialogue. Also, I might have missed something but I was confused about how it seemed like he was 13 through the whole book but then was all of a sudden 15 at the end. I guess I missed something about the timeline somewhere.