Sinful Book Reviews

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll notice that I have a huge interest in LGBT lit, especially for teens. I don’t think there’s enough of it out there, and a lot of it is published by smaller presses, so those don’t get as much of a marketing push as books published by huge publishing houses. Because of my interest, I try to read every teen LGBT book I can get my hands on. That’s what led me to request Homo.

Homo is about Will, a young boy who is outed the day before school starts, and spends his senior year dealing with aftermath and trying to figure out who he really is.

In theory, Homo is a great book. It’s relatable for teens going through the same thing. I’m sure almost everything that he feels and goes through happens to most gay kids. So, if there’s something I praise Homo for, it’s being authentic. Unfortunately, that’s as far as I get. Will is almost unbearable. I don’t expect to like every character I read about. Everyone is screwed up and imperfect in their own ways. My problem with this character is that he was hard to sympathize with. He would treat some of his friends like crap and then come whining to them when his life turned to shit. I don’t really know that he ever learned from it either, and that bothers me. It wasn’t so much the issues that I didn’t like, it was the execution. The characters weren’t developed enough to get me invested. I had no idea what the setting was, and that bothered me. For some reason, it felt like an older book; realistic, but not contemporary. These were things that just bothered me the whole time I was reading. I considered putting it down a few times, but I just kept reading. In the end, I’m not sure I gained anything from it, and that’s never a good thing to me.

I won’t say that I you shouldn’t read Homo, but I’m also not going to recommend it to anyone coming to me for LGBT books. If you had a different experience with Homo, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear another perspective.