Overall charming, with good art in cool-colored tones, tidbits of trans information intertwined into the narrative, and the occasional cat mention. Theo’s self-discovery was definitely a long, rocky and uncertain part of their life, and this book gets that across, but there the narrative doesn’t flip-flop or dance between different terms for too long. I resonated with a lot of this as a transmasc nonbinary person, even down to originally using the lesbian label(only stopping because of my own gender stuff) because I’ve never been attracted to men. It was interesting reading about how Theo would feel these blips and sparks of joy being referred to as a guy and with he/him pronouns early in their transition, because I use he/they pronouns myself and those emotions were kinda why I still use them.

The house metaphor wasn’t used as much as I was expecting it to be, though? It was mostly utilized at the end, and until then it was very sparse. Perhaps this was to make it more impactful whenever the author would show themself as one, but were also a couple of different metaphors that muddied it. Gender is a complicated thing, yes, but I think the metaphor of “your body is a home” for transgender experiences is kind of perfect, and I wish it was a bigger part of the illustrations/narrative(especially because it’s in the title)?

I do still feel like this can offer comfort for nonbinary and trans readers, though. It’s a bit more informative, but Theo puts just enough of themself into the book for it to avoid feeling like it’s devoid of any personal connection.