Camp

This is a lot of fun! To any savvy reader it's completely obvious how this “flamboyant teen gives himself a masculine makeover to become more like his dream guy's type” plotline is going to play out, and that's sort of lampshaded by the reactions of all of Randy/Del's friends, but like, it's a fun story, and obviously the queer spin on the storyline makes it new. I loved all the details about Camp Outland, a summer camp for queer teens. (That camp is fictional but I know there are real ones like it.) The camp's mandatory queer history sessions are a great way to infodump interesting pieces of queer history that I think a lot of queer teen readers will particularly find interesting.

Maybe more of a 3.5 rounded up.

So, I'm not going to get into the whole toxic masculinity, straight passing stuff this book looks at. (Or how wonderfully parents can screw up their kids.) I honestly don't have the energy for it and I'm sure that there's reviews on here that examine that much better than I ever could.

Instead I am going to talk about myself and enjoyment level.

I knew going into this book that Randy/Del and I had nothing in common. Honestly, he likes more traditionally femme things than I do. (Make-up, nail polish, coordinating your outfits...) But that's kind of part of the reason I wanted to read this book so badly. I like the take of ‘stereotype gay' vs. ‘straight gay' that comes to play with Randy/Del and how Del likes things that Randy would never have tried. (Not Randy's biggest fan because of what he does, but I knew that I disagreed with him from the synopsis, so I went into the book taking it with humor and didn't hate him.)

I, surprisingly enough, like Hudson, liked him right from the start because he said all the right things for me and by the time things start getting revealed about him, I was already invested in his character. I also feel really sorry for him both for his parents, and because of Randy. (Because, really, that's not how you go about getting someone's attention when you like them.)

I knew from the synopsis that Randy's whole plan to lie to get a boy to like him was one that I not only couldn't understand, I side-eyed with a great amount of worry. I went for the book anyway, because I thought this was going to implode early on and then it would be about dismantling toxic masculinity. (And probably the patriarchy.)

It's not. In fact, it's focused a lot more on the romance than I thought it would be.

Instead of all that, I wound up with Randy lying through his teeth (or by omission, like that makes it better) to a boy he professes to love, manipulating Hudson and even going so far as wanting to change this so called ‘perfect boy' so he's more like him. Which, even with a happy ending, I still didn't really like the romance because of all the lies. (Though, I suppose if they're both okay with it, more power to them. It just felt a little too...fairytale for me.)

All that being said, I did enjoy the book. I never got angry with it, except a little close to the end when things just seemed way too easy, and actually enjoyed it.

(Though, I have to admit, while I am happy for Hudson being able to at least see his true self, even if he can't be him yet, I really wish this didn't have every important young male character wearing nail polish.) (I mean, yeah, we don't get many, but all four that we know wear nail polish at least once and I feel like...like the message that you should be true to yourself kind of got lost in the message that gay men wear nail polish.) (Like, yeah, some gay men are not interested in wearing nail polish, that don't mean that is an exhibit of toxic masculinity, it just means they aren't interested in nail polish.) I don't know. I'm probably not explaining it very well.