Fool for Love

by Lisa Lees.

The votes are marriage is between a man and a woman. What do two young people in love do, if those words don't work for them? Carys and Jami may be girls, but Carys has never willingly worn a dress and Jami, who has, is intersexed. Though being a teenager in love is never easy, for Carys and Jami falling in love with each other is a terrifying journey in self-discovery and, ultimately, trust.

Genres: Queer, LGBT, Young Adult

220 pages, Unknown Binding

First published August 31, 2005

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book clearly has good intentions in talking about queer/trans/intersex issues, but the writing was pretty bad. The situations were often so unrealistic, mostly because no teenager is that emotionally healthy, practical, and perfectly communicative, especially if they have been socially ostracized for years. Often the author seemed to get lazy and force the characters into melodramatic confrontations to preach that homophobia, heterosexism, and gender binary discrimination and hatred are wrong, but it was so unrealistic because most people don't come out and announce those prejudices. Instead of dealing with the subtle realities of life for her characters, they became perfect poster children who talk like 30 year olds who have been in therapy for years. And the decision to make the particular intersex condition unspecified made the book confusing, generic, unreal, and almost offensively bland instead of a something that a real person could go through. In all, good intentions, terrible execution.

[Ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The main characters sound less like teenagers, and more like a PSA on intersex people. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the voice is preachy, but the overall tone is stilted. It meets a need, but I suspect it will be replaced when better fiction is written.

[Anthropo cackia · Rating 2 out of 5]

exceptionally cute intentions. the best company at my roughest times

[Sarah]

A sweet little book with a positive message for queer and questioning teens. It had some issues with pacing and plot as I recall, but the characters were nicely drawn.
The author sent it to me because she had mentioned one of my songs in the text - one of the teenagers listens to it on her CD player. It was pretty cool to see my name in print in that particular way.

[Shane Beaudry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome Book!!!