Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
My rating: 3/5 cats
so—more damaged kids attracting each other like magnets, filling in the places left by distant, absent, or overinvolved adults. a strange choice for LGBTQPR3Z week. sure, it is about a friendless boy whose home life is emotionally barren and a firecracker of a lesbian, but it isn’t really about sexuality—that part is used more as window dressing than spotlit, and only serves as an obstacle to keep the characters from kissing. she’s cool, he’s not, and yet they form a relationship based on zines and teen angst until john/gio douches out and the ending happens.
i don’t really understand what marisol gets out of the relationship—why she keeps coming back. he is clearly not as smart, talented, or interesting as she is, which is why he is forced to lie so frequently. what does some independent lesbian want out of a relationship with an emotionally underdeveloped boy, especially once it becomes clear he has a crush on her and asks her to the prom for goodness’ sake?? teen girls do not typically have this kind of patience with starry-eyed stalker losers, especially if even a drunken pity-hookup is so far out of the question.
it is such a glaringly one-sided relationship. the only compelling thing about him is his passivity in allowing his parents to treat him so shittily and his lack of interest in being present in his own life. perhaps he is fascinating to marisol the way an overturned beetle is fascinating to a young child: the struggle and the persistence of nature etc. etc.
dunno—the real question is “will i ever get caught up on all my silly little book reviews, or will there forever be these sad blank spots effing up my bookpages…?” i am totally in class right now, by the way.
NAUGHTY!!
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