Of course, the narrative (and other characters) call Rafe out on this, but it’s still a little frustrating. He effectively puts himself back in the closet but claims that that isn’t what he’s doing. His solution doesn’t entirely make sense, though. Rafe’s exhaustion with being seen as gay first, everything else second is interesting. That’s not bad… it’s just a bit more frothy than I wanted. It’s partially that, but it is also very much a romance story. The book is a quick, light read… which is interesting since I expected it to be a slightly more complicated rumination on labels. Things get complicated, though, when Rafe starts to fall for his new best friend. At his new school, a boarding school for boys, Rafe enjoys the perks of being assumed straight (but not closeted), including being welcomed into the jock circle and being able to form close platonic bonds with his teammates without the barrier that forms from straight guys ‘tolerating’ gay ones.

The novel follows Rafe, the openly gay teenage son of ridiculously liberal hippie parents, when he decides that he’s tired of all the baggage that comes with being openly gay. *I realize that this is a pretentious phrase worthy of Ben It is enjoyable, but it’s not quest-worthy. Because it took me so long to find, it eventually became the object of a quest and my anticipation for it resultantly increased exponentially.* When I finally found a copy, I was mostly disappointed. To read more about this book, or to buy a copy, click the handy-dandy Amazon link below.I read a lot of really positive blog reviews of Bill Konigsberg’s Openly Straight and kept an eye out for it for about a year.

It is not graphic, necessarily, but there are some male-male romantic scenes, so if you’re squicky about that, be warned. It is an interesting book, chock full of what my kids call “the feels,” and it makes you think about our assumptions about people and labels, and whether we should turn a blind eye to our differences or celebrate them out in the open. He likes this feeling of inclusion so much that He convinces his parents to send him to a boarding school in New England where he can start fresh and no one has to know him as anything in particular.Īt his new school, he simply doesn’t talk about his sexuality, and people make assumptions that this good looking kid who can play soccer well and immediately fits in with the popular crowd is straight.

He’s athletic and reasonably smart, and just wants to be one of the guys. He doesn’t get much flak from his schoolmates for it, but he is known as “the gay kid” and this has repercussions socially. In Openly Straight, a young adult book by Bill Konigsberg, Rafe, a Colorado teen, has been out of the closet since eighth grade.

Openly straight book