The following post includes affiliate links. More details here.  As you’re doing your Amazon shopping, we’d be ever so grateful if you’d use our affiliate link to do so as it helps pay the bills around here!

What do you do when no one is watching?  Typically, we relish in the quiet and read a book!  If you also like to read books when no one is watching, or when they are, then you’re invited to join us in April to discuss When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.  Don’t ask Nikki what this book is about.  Not only has she not read the marketing copy (not that she’d remember), but she heard Alyssa Cole and thriller and hit recommend.  When a Virtual Book Club friend commented that we haven’t read a thriller (although we did read a horror novel, which felt thriller adjacent), Cole’s 2020 novel immediately came to mind, so here we are.  If you’re already in, realizing we haven’t actually set a date yet, go ahead and sign up here.  Date TBD before the end of February!

Darling readers, we have to stop doing a whole month of Young Adult novels, except it was a total accident that we did mostly two in a row.  Next month will be different, I think, I hope.  It’s going to be a different kind of wild ride, at the least.  All that said, y’all, Felix Ever After is an important book and I’m SO very glad I read it.  Anyone who reads fiction as a window into the soul and a way to share in the experiences of others needs to read this (understanding that teens frequently use…choice vocabulary some may not appreciate) because this is a window into the soul of a Black trans young person and a reminder of what it’s like to be a teenager, which I found really helpful as there are teens in my life as well as several preteens (and one about to turn double digits very soon at my house).  I needed to remember how big and important everything felt when I was a teen, even though it all (mostly) feels so miniscule now (especially as I just got an email about my 20th high school reunion…yup, there’s that).  

What is Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender about anyway?  It’s the story of a Black trans young person still working to discover his identity.  It’s a story about high school, the pressure of choosing what’s next, relationships, bullies, acceptance, and the importance of communication.  It’s teen drama, but it’s also relatable to an adult because would that I could live in the day where communication problems stop and everyone magically understands each other.  I learned some new, hip (although probably not) things (hacking vs cracking, for example) and I felt seen in the drama of Felix’s parents and how their split affected how he sees himself.  Personally, I really enjoyed the settings of this novel, which is centered around a group in a summer program at an art school in Brooklyn.  The feel of the arts school, and the language of the acrylics classroom combined with the freedom of city living and just hopping on the train made me long to spend some time in the hustle and bustle of a fun, vibrant urban area again.  

As much as I didn’t want to read another book about teens (again), I really enjoyed Felix Ever After.  Callender does a fantastic job of establishing the sense of place, highlighting the struggles of the characters, and carefully placing the small pieces that help them grow through the novel.  I’d love to see the movie version of this, but only if Callender gets lots of input into the script and the casting.  Personally, as someone who’s never really questioned a lot of things about my identity because they’ve just always seemed to fit, I appreciate that Felix is a trans person at the beginning, and still has struggles with his identity.  I didn’t know anything about the depth of the variance that exists in the trans community and I’m glad I know more now.  I am so grateful for this window into the lives of trans people, understanding that this is just one possible window of so, so many more.  

I’m giving Felix Ever After four solid stars.  The book is fantastically written and very well developed.  The story isn’t one I’ll revisit, but it’s one I’m very glad I’ve read, and Callender has earned a spot on my TBR for their backlist and future titles.  I’ll leave you with this – the suicide statistics for trans people are real and high.  The threat of violence is real and high.  When we build understanding for one another, we build a safer world, a more vibrant, beautiful world, and I hope you’ll consider reading Felix Ever After and other books that help you see through windows into the souls of people who don’t look like you or don’t identify like you.  

What’s something you’ve read that really helped you understand someone else?

~Nikki 

Kacen Callender is a best-selling and award-winning author of books for children, teens, and adults. Their debut middle-grade book, Hurricane Child, is a Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Book Award winner. Their two-newest fantasy novels have also won awards. The adult fantasy series entitled Islands of Blood and Storm includes Queen of the Conquered which is the 2020 winner of the World Fantasy Award and King of the Dragonflies which won the 2020 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. Felix Ever After is an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book.  Kacen currently lives in St Thomas of the U.S. Virgin Islands where they were born and raised. In their free time they enjoy RPG video games, practicing their art, and focusing on healing and growth. 

I feel like their focus on healing and growth is important because of a blog post of theirs that was published in August 2021. In it, Kacen states that they are taking out mentions of Ezra Patel’s nationality as well as mentions of Harry Potter for accuracy and the unintentional harm they have caused readers by using such references in a novel that is supposed to celebrate all types of acceptance and trans joy. I think it’s really important that an author who is Black, queer, and trans takes it upon themself to change things that have caused such harm from future printings of the book (Nikki’s kindle version and my library dead tree copy both included all the mentions). I think it’s admirable that Kacen is not only voluntarily changing things that could cause harm to readers which don’t affect the story and also donating money to groups that help the people who could have been hurt. That is what I would call healing and growth. (And no, money doesn’t fix the hurt that has happened, but without the money that has been given after a hurt has occurred no one can do the good that needs to be done in the future, to keep the hurt from happening to more people.)

Felix Ever After was a book I wish was available in my high school days. Not just for me to learn what it’s like in the minds and hearts of trans and queer persons as regards their identities, but so that I could learn how to love the trans and queer people in my life better. To learn how to be a better ally to them in their struggles, both internal and external. The external struggles of Felix and the way he associates with his friends and family are of course filled with big deal teenage angsty feelings, but gender identity is a big deal no matter the age of the person. People of any age can have these internal struggles, questions, and make decisions that are different from those they have made before. In support of any questions you may have about gender in our society and learning about people in general, Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression by Iris Gottlieb is probably a great place to start. I haven’t read it, but it came up in my searches while researching our author and the excerpts seem right on for follow up reading after Felix Ever After.

Personally, I had a whole lot more feelings that I can’t really remember or place because of my lack of ability to HIGHLIGHT IN A DEAD TREE LIBRARY BOOK (righteous annoyance). I know I want to say more about personal experience loving and allying with my trans, queer, and nonbinary friends and family, but for privacy reasons I can’t and won’t. That’s their story and their choice to share it. My story is just loving them because they are amazing human beings exactly as they are. Felix Ever After gets 4 stars for being a book I will repeatedly recommend to readers of any age.

I’m not going to ask you a question today, I’m going to give you an assignment: Read a book about a person who is not like you then love on people who are like those characters. On purpose and without reservation or judgement. Because everyone deserves love like that.

~Ashley

PLEASE SUPPORT US WHEN YOU SHOP BY FIRST CLICKING ON THE IMAGES BELOW: