This review is essentially a list of things I liked a lot. Vibes off the chart for this book. Highly recommend, tho it’s weird and quite niche. 

Lots of little great moments:
•great chapter titles
• The lesbian sheep explanation and then throughline  
• watching Anderson and Bianca get closer and deepen their friendship. He’s a great friend and I also liked the Coleman family dynamics 
•The fact that they dubbed it “Feathergate” 😂
• Lots of great little amusing asides from Bianca’s POV. I enjoyed the incorporation of Bianca’s numbered fears scattered throughout, that was a fun addition. 
• I also like watching Bianca start the process of figuring out their gender. 
• Also obviously I like all the birding moments, that’s what drew me in in the first place! 
• I also enjoy that we watch Bianca get braver throughout the book. At first they never wanted to leave their bedroom but even halfway through they started branching out and doing small new things. Baby steps! And then by the end! Look at them go! 
• This books combines a deep interest in a lot of weird things: birding, anime, Shakespeare, gender identity exploration, thriller, cults, etc. Not that gender identity exploration or thrillers are weird, but with all of those things combined, this book covers a lot of ground but never in a way that is too much or leaves anything hanging.  

Very sweet. I enjoyed the asexual rep and all the (internal and external) dialogue around figuring that out. I did find Felicity’s ability to catastrophize wearying after like the tenth time one snag in a plan would escalate into “my entire future is ruined.” 

I love R. Eric’s voice and random asides, that was great. I read this book Here For It and thoroughly enjoyed his voice there too. 

Overall this was enjoyable, though too long. I enjoyed reading about two Black queer teens’ first time at Pride while I was also headed to a Pride parade in my city, tho I didn’t have nearly as many hijinks, alas! 

Not sure what the point of the racist man in the museum was, or why that was such a throughline/lengthy plot point. 

This was a love letter to queerness and deep friendship. Having limitless potential but not being sure what to do with it. 

I quite enjoyed The New One + have watched all his specials + seen him live in Boston, so when my library got a copy of this I was excited. It was only ok tho. Quite dated language - I know it’s 10 years old but it was tough reading at time. I felt like I have heard most of these stories already in his various specials and while they are a bit expanded it wasn’t enough that I was captivated. I also think his delivery and timing are key, which is lost when reading.  

We love a low angst romance !

I know this is not a “memoir” and I read its “essays” according to the author, but even still I did not enjoy this. It just seems….superficial. Why is the essay about being a baker included? It was just a straight up description of her job, didn’t extrapolate broadly about how being a baker taught her to work hard/put in effort and you reap a reward/etc. The ending was literally just that she will always be grateful she learned how to make bread. No life lessons learned or morals, just some seemingly pointless reminiscing. 

She also frequently talks about how big her emotions are but doesn’t go into depth about them AT ALL. The extent of her analysis is literally “I was happy” and “I was sad.” 
This is a direct quote to sum it up: “I was so happy. It felt good to help my best friend.” Like…..ok, and????

Two very good essays about her experience with sexual harassment. It felt like whiplash compared to the essays which were extremely shallow, but those two had a lot of depth and were good. 

Summation: not everyone needs to write a book and that’s ok.