Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow

3,5*
Sadly, I did not love this book like I thought I would.
What I wanted from this book was explaining and examining Pride and all that surrounds it from the perspective of a 12/13 year old boy whose father just came out as gay.
Instead I got a third of the book where the parents are fighting followed by two thirds of people getting lost and trying to find each other, which happens to be at Pride in London.
While there are definitely great moments relating to Pride and queerness (for example pointing out that it is a protest and using a Marsha P Johnson quote), it sadly fails to examine these further.
Who was Marsha P Johnson and why is her quote used? Why is Pride (still) a protest? Why do people become drag queens and what does it mean when people use they/them pronouns?
All of these things are touched on briefly but never actually talked about, which is such a shame when you have a book for younger audiences who probably do not (fully) understand these things.

The biggest miss for me was that there is almost no bonding between the main character and his father. The whole reason he goes to Pride is to find answers relating to his dad and the situation they are in. Some of these answers are found, but with people he meets on the way. The whole getting to London and trying to find each other after getting lost takes up almost half the book and then at the end Archie (mc) and his dad have a quick chat about how nothing had actually changed and then they hug. There is no talk about how the first Pride was for his father after finally having come out, nothing about how the family reacts or what it would be like if his dad got into a new relationship.

All in all, this is not a bad book. It has a very diverse cast of characters and is a great conversation starter for young audiences. It also has the great sense of adventure and humour that suits young readers, but it could have been so much more.