Have you ever read a book and thought, "I could have written that and it probably would have been better"? Well, that's how I felt while I was reading this one.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

I do believe that Ritch C. Savin-Williams set out with good intentions. He wanted to write a really in-depth book about a frequently-overlooked demographic. He did a lot of research. He interviewed a lot of young people who are attracted to multiple genders. He wrote almost 300 pages of very in-depth discussions about bisexuality. So why did it fail so spectacularly?

Usually, when I don't like a book, it's for one of two reasons: it wasn't to my personal taste or I wasn't the intended audience. But I struggled to determine who WAS supposed to be the intended audience for this book. It's too academic to be useful to young people who might be questioning their sexualities. It wouldn't be a helpful resource to the parents and teachers of those young people. And it's not saying anything fresh or original enough to be valuable to other academics. It's certainly not aimed at me, a college-educated bisexual person: the word "we" is consistently used to refer to the collective of people who are not bisexual (as defined by this author).

The author makes a lot of fundamental missteps here that indicate to me that he doesn't actually understand what he's talking about. He includes identities like trans* and nonbinary under the bisexual (or rather bi+ or m-spec) umbrella and in fact continually treats gender identities as sexualities. The presence of the word "nonbinary" in the title does NOT mean that this book contains an examination of the ways in which nonbinary gender identities and m-spec sexualities interact with each other and the reasons why so many people identify as both nonbinary (or genderfluid, genderqueer, etc.) and bisexual (or pansexual, polysexual, fluid, etc.). No, the reason "nonbinary" is in the title is because the author genuinely believes that nonbinary gender identities are part of the larger bisexual (m-spec) umbrella. 

There were so many missed opportunities in this book. I kept thinking to myself as I was reading, "If only the author would actually examine the ways in which race and culture impact bi+ identity, taking into account factors such as colonialism. If only the author actually knew the definitions of the words that he's using and didn't lump in every single identity that's not straight, gay, or lesbian (or rather, according to this book, "heterosexual" and "homosexual") under the umbrella label of "bisexual." If only he acknowledged that the term "two-spirit" is its own umbrella that is exclusive to Native communities and not some new-fangled Gen Z gender label. If only the interview questions had been better, more complex, more focused on community and socialization and systemic power structures and less on biology and sexual activity. If only the author had demonstrated a knowledge of the history behind the labels he was discussing instead of claiming that nearly all of them (including things like political lesbianism, which dates back to the 1960s) are new things invented by today's youth."

Maybe this book will be useful to someone, but I cannot imagine who that person would be. If you don't already know about the wealth of experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, this book is a very bad place to start as it is confusing and full of incorrect information. If you're already more familiar with LGBTQ+ issues and you want to read an academic text that explores those experiences in-depth (as I did), you will likely be bothered by the lack of awareness of basic gender and sexuality concepts (as I was).

I probably would have found slightly more value in this book if I were a developmental psychologist, like the author is, but even then, I don't think I would have appreciated the author's methods. I really didn't need to keep hearing about every single interviewee's "first adolescent sexual experience." And because the book attempts to delve into other fields, such as gender studies and sociology, I feel more than qualified to say that it does not successfully accomplish what it tried to do.

I feel sorry for the young people who were interviewed for this book. I don't feel like their stories were done justice.