Bill Konigsberg - Openly Straight

Rafe is a normal teenager from Boulder, Colorado. He plays soccer. He's won skiing prizes. He likes to write.
And, oh yeah, he's gay. He's been out since 8th grade, and he isn't teased, and he goes to other high schools and talks about tolerance and stuff. And while that's important, all Rafe really wants is to just be a regular guy. Not that GAY guy. To have it be a part of who he is, but not the headline, every single time.
So when he transfers to an all-boys' boarding school in New England, he decides to keep his sexuality a secret -- not so much going back in the closet as starting over with a clean slate. But then he sees a classmate breaking down. He meets a teacher who challenges him to write his story. And most of all, he falls in love with Ben ... who doesn't even know that love is possible.
This witty, smart, coming-out-again story will appeal to gay and straight kids alike as they watch Rafe navigate being different, fitting in, and what it means to be himself.

Comment: No idea now why I've added this book to the ebook pile, so to speak. The usual dynamics in an M/M romance intrigue me and I've read wonderful romances featuring gay characters and I suppose I wanted one more book with this content, but I must not have paid enough attention to the blurb before I got it...

In this story we meet Rafe, a teenager in Colorado, who has a pretty good life except he is gay and is out and everyone around is supportive, in fact a bit too supportive, as if he is only seen for the gay label. He wants to be a teenager who does things just like everybody else, and doesn't want to be judged by one thing, so he convinces his parents to let him study in a boys' school in Massachusetts and he plans on not telling anyone he is gay, so live through a different experience. The problem is that he discovers hiding or omitting he is gay is a lot harder than he imagined, especially if he wants to have real relationships and friendships with people who he wants to trust him back. When he starts falling in love with a friend who isn't as sure about himself as Nate is things are even more difficult...

Obviously, this is more than a coming of age story, since Rafe and those around him are still young and trying to know who they are. This isn't a type of story I look for in m/m novels, but I have read many books with it so far and some were certainly very good. But this one being in the YA genre made reading it a little less appealing, even more so when a lot of the plot sets on the idea of Rafe, in reality, lying to be seen differently.

I mean, from a pure social POV, this was interesting and I could see how a clever student like Rafe could see the experience, but here's the thing, Rafe is a teenager, not a mature man, and while this doesn't have to mean that all adults know whet they are doing - clearly not - of course a huge part of the story is about Rafe"learning" a lesson, getting the message and the knowledge that actions have consequences and sometimes they aren't as easy to go through as one might think.

I also found it interesting that he chose an all boys's school to make his experiment, and while there's some reference to is being a good school to prepare a student going to college, I think the goal was more about the physical distance. Rafe obviously meets different people in this school, but some things are going to be repeated until the end of times, and one of them is that there is always a social hierarchy in a high school. Some people are popular, others are not and this was also part of Rafe's experiment. In fact, this book brought to mind several movies with teenagers, where the "moral" would be to learn one is worth for who one is and not by those around, only this time the main character was dealing with the usual things and was also gay.

While studying and making friends and doing normal teenage stuff, Rafe also becomes close to Ben, another student at the school. It's a fact this isn't a book that focuses primarily in romance and I think that this was another tactic to showcase how wrong Rafe was in assuming an identity without sharing everything with someone he was getting closer to. I think the development of their relationship was sweet and realistic to how they had to interact in that context. Of course, the reader knowing things Ben didn't would most likely result in a not so good situation.

In this regard, I liked that the author didn't find a perfect end for this element of the story. I think this option happened for two reasons; first, as I've said, this wasn't meant to be a simple romance story, and second, the goal was to highlight the naivete perhaps, but also the mistakes Rafe incurred in while trying to deal with others as part of an experiment. At least, this is what it felt like to me. This means that, ultimately, this story felt more like a study on characterization and what it is to grow up. We are even told that Rafe went to nearby schools back home, to talk about being gay! This feels a lot like Rafe is like this role model, and this story is more about what it might mean that young students can be gay in a school environment.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with this, but Rafe was playing a role... I never felt this was really Rafe's story for himself, so my final appreciation of the book is an average one. I understand the author's goal, but then I expected more out of the fictional elements. I see there is a sequel, focused on Ben and, I assume, his POV, but I don't know if I'd want to try it, at least not soon.

Grade: 6/10