So real!
Excruciating, in a good way.
Incredible characterization of kids and adults.


This is such a brilliant book. It’s about a queer teen with IBD who is dealing with so much: endless pooping, feeling alone, her mom dating her best friend’s mom, having crushes on girls, a first crush and kiss, messy friendships with her best friend, a new relationship with her body as she comes to understand herself as someone with a chronic illness. 

This was such an intense read that I found excruciating for a lot of reasons, partly because Al mostly feels embarrassment and anxiety. She is embarrassed about everything. It’s not just her body, having to poop, and it’s not even being queer and being afraid of what people will think. It’s like every feeling she has is mortifying. Being perceived is mortifying, her mom talking to her, having a crush, having feelings—she says over and over again how embarrassing it is to exist in all these ways. And of course her queerness and her chronic illness intersect with that and are part of that. A huge part of the book is her finding a support group with other kids with the same chronic illness and how she finds ways to feel less shame and embarrassment with them because they get it and because they are open about their bodies and bodily functions. 

But also some of Al’s anxiety and embarrassment are not directly related to her illness, and it made me think a lot about how much of kids at that age, 12, being embarrassed is just natural human puberty and how much is cultural, how much is because we teach kids from a very young age that having bodies is something gross, that anything not “normal” is gross, that feeling and having emotions is gross. I just felt it all so acutely in my chest, her going through all this stuff and having this amazing supportive best friend and mom and mom’s girlfriend but not telling any of them because she feels so alone, and then she becomes selfish and insufferable, and it's this cycle of silence and isolation that honestly I still see playing out in my own life and I’m 38. 

Everything about this book felt so real. The mom character who’s trying to help but just asks her about her stomach all the time, whose own worry makes Al worry more, so they can’t communicate. I don’t have a chronic illness but I have experienced this exact same thing with my mom more than once. All the time. And Al, too, she’s so annoying, she says "whatever!" and slams her door and doesn’t want to talk but also deeply wants adult support and love and when she finally ends up letting go and showing herself to her mom and Beth (girlfriend) she’s sobbing into them, wanting comfort. We are all so much, we’re all going through so much, it takes so much work to reach out and see other people, when your’e 12, when you're 38.

Love love love the model of health care (amazing doctor) and peer support around chronic illness that is mirrored here, love how Al has to learn so much about her own disease, how she feels isolated and angry at first and it’s very much community and shared experience and people who get it and who don’t try to fix it but just sit with her and share that eventually helps her cope and feel okay. 

Also I’ve been thinking a lot about earnestness and the whole thing with Al being so embarrassed about having a body with needs and feelings is making me think about that, and how kids are sort of automatically open to talking about stuff and feeling how they feel, and how that goes away as they get older, and I think we kind of force kids out of earnestness. I think we teach them in this society that earnestness hurts, and that’s why someone like Al feels like it will be the end of the world if someone knows she wants to kiss a girl. 

This was such a well plotted book with deep characterization and such real situations and emotions and it felt just the right amount of hopeful and tender and funny while getting into some serious angst and pre-teen on the edge of teen drama and hardship that really touched me as well as making me cringe.