Mom and Jo, Julie Anne Peters
Book: 6
Title: Mom and Jo
Author: Julie Anne Peters
Genre: YA, queer lit
One-sentence summary: Fourteen-year-old Nicholas sifts through his memories of his parents, a lesbian couple who’ve had a long and stormy relationship, as they begin to unravel and finally split up.
Why did you get this book? Well, for starters it was also in the bargain bin at Borders, but I squeed when I saw it and might well have bought it full-price, so. I’ve read Julie Anne Peters before -- Keeping You a Secret and Luna -- and she’s rapidly becoming my go-to author for LGBTQQIAA YA fiction.
Did you enjoy the book? Yes -- I expected to and wasn’t disappointed. The thing that Peters does that a lot of other people who set out to write, say, “a lesbian novel for teens” don’t manage is that while her books could easily be classed as Issue Literature, she never takes the easy out of making her characters into props in a book-length Ten Things You Should Know About Queer People pamphlet. Which sounds like a harsh description of books that do that. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Queer 101 books, exactly; they have their role and visibility is always good and blah blah blah. But it isn’t what Julie Anne Peters does. Her characters always resonate strong and true, and though the books are indisputably queer, that never feels limiting, because the characters are fully fleshed-out. I especially like her knack for taking a character who would traditionally be a supporting character in a piece of Issue Lit -- the son of the lesbian couple, for example, or the sister of the transgirl in Luna -- and making that character central. Her plotting is occasionally a little kitchen-sinky and her prose is competent rather than shiny/original, but I’ve always been of the belief that a story should grow out of the characters and that if you can make me believe in them you’ve done most of the hard work of writing a good book. In short, I like her a lot.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No, and yes. She has a few more books I still haven’t read. Right now I’m on a YA kick that I may well never get out of -- as I’ve come to identify more and more strongly as a YA writer it seems naturally for that to comprise the bulk of my reading -- and she is one of the best queer YA writers out there.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping it. It looks nice next to her other two books on my shelf. I like building collections by particular authors.
Anything else? Not really. I am sad that I will probably not find any more of her books for $4 in a bargain bin and will have to pay full price for the rest.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8
Title: Mom and Jo
Author: Julie Anne Peters
Genre: YA, queer lit
One-sentence summary: Fourteen-year-old Nicholas sifts through his memories of his parents, a lesbian couple who’ve had a long and stormy relationship, as they begin to unravel and finally split up.
Why did you get this book? Well, for starters it was also in the bargain bin at Borders, but I squeed when I saw it and might well have bought it full-price, so. I’ve read Julie Anne Peters before -- Keeping You a Secret and Luna -- and she’s rapidly becoming my go-to author for LGBTQQIAA YA fiction.
Did you enjoy the book? Yes -- I expected to and wasn’t disappointed. The thing that Peters does that a lot of other people who set out to write, say, “a lesbian novel for teens” don’t manage is that while her books could easily be classed as Issue Literature, she never takes the easy out of making her characters into props in a book-length Ten Things You Should Know About Queer People pamphlet. Which sounds like a harsh description of books that do that. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Queer 101 books, exactly; they have their role and visibility is always good and blah blah blah. But it isn’t what Julie Anne Peters does. Her characters always resonate strong and true, and though the books are indisputably queer, that never feels limiting, because the characters are fully fleshed-out. I especially like her knack for taking a character who would traditionally be a supporting character in a piece of Issue Lit -- the son of the lesbian couple, for example, or the sister of the transgirl in Luna -- and making that character central. Her plotting is occasionally a little kitchen-sinky and her prose is competent rather than shiny/original, but I’ve always been of the belief that a story should grow out of the characters and that if you can make me believe in them you’ve done most of the hard work of writing a good book. In short, I like her a lot.
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No, and yes. She has a few more books I still haven’t read. Right now I’m on a YA kick that I may well never get out of -- as I’ve come to identify more and more strongly as a YA writer it seems naturally for that to comprise the bulk of my reading -- and she is one of the best queer YA writers out there.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping it. It looks nice next to her other two books on my shelf. I like building collections by particular authors.
Anything else? Not really. I am sad that I will probably not find any more of her books for $4 in a bargain bin and will have to pay full price for the rest.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8
