 | Felix ever after Author: Callender, Kacen | |
| Price: $9.83 | ||
Summary:
Felix Love, a transgender seventeen-year-old, attempts to get revenge by catfishing his anonymous bully, but lands in a quasi-love triangle with his former enemy and his best friend.
| Accelerated Reader Information: Interest Level: UG Reading Level: 5.10 Points: 13.0 Quiz: 514598 |
Full Text Reviews:
School Library Journal - 03/01/2020 Gr 9 Up—Black, queer, and trans Felix explores love, friendship, and possibly retribution in this powerful #OwnVoices story of identity and self-worth. Seventeen-year-old Felix Love hopes the summer art program he's attending will help raise his grades and increase his chances of getting a full scholarship to attend Brown. Surrounded by a diverse and mostly queer group of artist friends, Felix navigates complicated relationships, including transphobia and harassment from his own friends, from his loving but still learning father, and from an anonymous bully. Bent on revenge, Felix begins catfishing his top suspect, only to encounter some uncomfortable and surprising revelations about not just his potential tormentor, but his own feelings. Coping with the abandonment of his mother and feeling like he isn't worthy of love, Felix also grapples with the unsettling feeling that his identity still isn't the best fit. It's only after a lot of research that he discovers the label "demiboy" and begins to feel a sense of comfort that extends to how he works through and untangles his various complex relationships, both romantic and platonic. Immensely readable, the narration and the dialogue are honest, smart, and at times, bitingly vicious. Felix and friends are complicated characters, constantly fighting, messing up, and making up. Felix is achingly relatable, both vulnerable and guarded, often on the sidelines but wanting so much more. His explorations address privilege, marginalization, and intersectionality while he learns about what and who get to define a person. VERDICT Full of warmth, love, and support, this is an important story and an essential purchase.—Amanda MacGregor, Parkview Elementary School, Rosemount, MN - Copyright 2020 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.
Booklist - 05/15/2020 *Starred Review* Seventeen-year-old Felix is Black, queer, and trans. He's had a rough start to the new semester, between feeling neglected by his best friend and being targeted by a transphobic bully who has deadnamed him and hung up old photos from his childhood in the lobby of the school for all to see. In the process of pursuing revenge, Felix also questions whether or not he feels comfortable identifying as a boy, searching for a label that better suits him. And to top it all off, he's still processing feelings of abandonment from when his mother left him and his father. With each passing day, Felix makes new discoveries about himself—finding the descriptor demiboy is a game-changer, for instance—and the people closest to him, including one or two he never thought he’d ever get close to. Callender (This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story, 2018) populates Felix’s world with a cast of queer, trans, and racially diverse individuals, genuinely reflecting the lives of many who work hard to build a supportive chosen family. From its stunning cover art to the rich, messy, nuanced narrative at its heart, this is an unforgettable story of friendship, heartbreak, forgiveness, and self-discovery, crafted by an author whose obvious respect for teen readers radiates from every page. - Copyright 2020 Booklist.
