I thought this book was going to be a cutesy story about a boy coming out and falling in love (and it is, to a point), but it's moreso about confronting our own prejudices (especially racist tendencies we may not even realize we have). I love that this book challenged me. Four chapters in, I realized one of the characters I had thought of as a certain way in my head, was black. Six chapters in, the same thing happened with another character. Some twenty something chapters in, I realized a character I had imagined as a thin to average sized person was not. My default for imaging characters is straight, white, and thin.

And that's not okay.

White shouldn't be a default. Straight shouldn't be a default. Thin shouldn't be a default.

Thank you, Becky Albertalli for helping me shine a light on my own prejudices. We only stop growing when we think we've figured it all out, are as open-minded and progressive as we think we can be. We are wrong. Now I know better about how I assume people and characters "should be". I will do better.