I was provided a digital ARC copy of this novel through NetGalley. All opinions are honest.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars
TW: transphobia, homophobia, suicide attempt, depression, gender dysphoria,
CW: hormone treatment, name change (this is triggering for me and i had to skip over these scenes, so i wanted to include it)

I am a trans person and when I'm reading books with trans characters or trans subjects, I tend to be very critical. I really appreciate Meredith Russo and her work, as I really enjoyed If I Was Your Girl. But, this story felt a little too good to be true. Yes, it's great to have novels where the trans person gets a happy ending because in reality, that's not the truth for most of us. So, I did enjoy the story. I thought it was a great concept and I enjoyed Morgan and Eric's characters a lot. The character development was spot-on among most of the characters (esp Peyton!! that redemption *claps*).

I specifically liked the focus on Morgan losing her mother at a young age, that definitely brought me to tears at the end.

As I am not a trans woman and I am a trans man, I cannot comment on the way Morgan's character was written but since this is an #ownvoices novel, I believe the representation to be good.

Now, here are some of my problems. The issues I have sort of get resolved in the character's development and I believe that the author must've written this as the character didn't have any knowledge of what being transgender means and she was living in a very close minded community and didn't have any resources nor did she know any LGBTQ+ people.

1. Morgan refers to how she's feeling (gender dysphoria) as a disease, meaning that being transgender is a disease which is not correct information as far as I know.
2. Being told she's a freak, she starts to believe it herself and decides living her life as a boy would be easier. As a trans person, I've thought this multiple times and so, I could relate to her here but I felt like that wasn't sharing a good message or educating the reader if they're trans or not.
3. There's a scene that REALLY triggered me. This is a flashback where Morgan is remembering her parents watching a presidential debate and the person running for president calls transgender people a very harmful phrase.
4. I was really confused because pre-coming out, Eric kept saying that Morgan looked like a girl in her body shape and all and I want to disagree with this because it doesn't make much sense to me. But, this could just because my trans experience is different.
5. Last, there is a part where Morgan says she hears the word transgender and knows that fits with her, but doesn't have context to what it is. So, I was just super confused by that.

Overall, I think this was a good contemporary novel, it just had me confused by a couple things. Hopefully these are just my own misunderstandings or they have been changed in publishing.