Firstly, this book is incredibly important. Let's get that out of the way. This book absolutely needs to exist; it's going to mean so much to many people, and we need stories of gender euphoria and joy just as much as we need stories of dysphoria and rage. For the very fact that this book is so groundbreaking and has clearly been written with real love and happiness, it's great.

That said, I just don't understand why, as the editor of a purportedly diverse anthology, you would include 11 of your own essays, and 1 from your wife. There are 29 essays in here, and 12 of them - nearly half! - are either by the editor or her partner. That, to me, is incredibly poor editorial practice. It also absolutely means that the book suffers from a feeling of unevenness. If I read an anthology, as I very often do, I read it because I'm deliberately seeking differing perspectives and narratives. If I want to read all about one person's experiences, I'll pick up a memoir. In the introduction, we hear that Laura Kate Dale received hundreds of submissions for this book, which begs the question of why she only decided to include 17 of them. I genuinely think it would have been a much better and more enlightening book if she'd had just the one essay in here and allowed space for other writers to tell their stories.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy her chapters in it, because I did; I just didn't think that the structure of this book worked particularly well. There were some real stand-out essays in here (Mia Violet's essay on being a bridesmaid was my favourite!) and I think they would have been given more of a chance to shine had they not all been so outnumbered by the editor. It felt like a missed opportunity for some more diverse narratives and writing styles to be included.

I'd love to see more books in this vein in the future, and I really do hope that this book reaches all the people who need it. I just wish it had been edited differently.