The Porcupine of Truth

Assigned reading for MLIS 7421: Multicultural Youth Literature.

Wow, this is, like... literally one of the worst things I have ever seen win an award in my life. I am completely baffled as to how this book won the 2016 Stonewall YA Award, for a lot of reasons:

1. The protagonist isn't even queer. His friend is a lesbian. His friend who we watch the narrator hypersexualize and objectify every five pages.

2. The narrator cannot seem to go a single chapter without talking about his dick, and how everything his friend does gives him a boner. If I'd had to sit through one more mention of it or one more dick joke, I was going to chuck this book across my living room.

3. The writing is horrible. It's meant to be funny and the protagonist is supposed to be this super witty improv genius, but he's not funny, literally nothing he says or does is charming or amusing in the slightest, and whenever he's not thinking about his dick or how hot his new friend is, he's literally thinking to himself, “What can I say that's funny?” over and over. No joke, in one chapter, there are three different occasions where he gets upset because he isn't part of a conversation and he literally narrates that he's desperately trying to think of something hilarious so he can be the center of attention. It's awful. Awful. Literally one of the worst narrators I've ever read.

I can't even form a proper review for this. I refuse to try. I made it through about 150 pages before I slammed it shut and typed this up. I can most assuredly say that I will not be picking up anything else by this author, nor would I ever recommend this book to anyone.