Ah, the dirt and grit that is high school. The tremulous fear of not fitting in, of scrambling to keep your head above water AND keep your head down if you’re a scholarship black kid in a sea of pale-faced rich kids and the hard, teeth-baring grin of a girl who’s scratched and clawed her way to the top of the popularity food chain.
At first our two main protagonists seem like clichéd characters you’ve seen in countless teenage comedies from the Eighties. Devon is the aforementioned scholarship child and Chiamaka is a cutthroat Queen Bee straight out of a Tina Fey movie. They have absolutely nothing in common except the school they attend. Devon is determined to graduate with honors, to make his hard-working mother proud and to subsume himself in piano playing and music composition, the only things that bring him joy and satisfaction.
Chiamaka is your typical overachiever with high marks in all her classes, has the right extracurriculars on her CV and she’s a polyglot who speaks five languages, to boot. She’s angling towards a gilded life in which she’ll marry that handsome boy she’s had her eye on, have a high-paying job and a grand house in the best neighborhood. She also has her eye set on making her hot best guy friend Jamie into her boyfriend. They’d look soooo good together. She’s always flawlessly put together with the kind of effortless look that you know takes hours to get right. She sports the understated hair, clothing and makeup that screams “Oh, this? I just put on a little lip gloss and I’m good to go!”
Devon has one friend, period. Chiamaka has no friends. What she does have is a coterie that consists of one (mostly) genial British girl and a vicious frenemy who’d love to steal her crown. (It’s hard to know which of them to pity, really.) But both of them are certain of one thing: this is THEIR year.
Aaaand wait for the other shoe to fall…
The author gives us these clichés…and then drops the boom on the reader. Devon is gay. Right, it’s the 21st century; nobody cares. But this is high school and people aren’t as progressive as you think. Devon is in the closet and that means he’s fair game for anybody who guesses his secret. So the author gives us a twist that is predictable yet cruel as hell and a perfect setup for scholastic bedlam that is certain to follow.
Suddenly I’m interested. Suddenly I’m invested in this story. Now I want to know what happens next. Cue the dramatic music.
At first our two main protagonists seem like clichéd characters you’ve seen in countless teenage comedies from the Eighties. Devon is the aforementioned scholarship child and Chiamaka is a cutthroat Queen Bee straight out of a Tina Fey movie. They have absolutely nothing in common except the school they attend. Devon is determined to graduate with honors, to make his hard-working mother proud and to subsume himself in piano playing and music composition, the only things that bring him joy and satisfaction.
Chiamaka is your typical overachiever with high marks in all her classes, has the right extracurriculars on her CV and she’s a polyglot who speaks five languages, to boot. She’s angling towards a gilded life in which she’ll marry that handsome boy she’s had her eye on, have a high-paying job and a grand house in the best neighborhood. She also has her eye set on making her hot best guy friend Jamie into her boyfriend. They’d look soooo good together. She’s always flawlessly put together with the kind of effortless look that you know takes hours to get right. She sports the understated hair, clothing and makeup that screams “Oh, this? I just put on a little lip gloss and I’m good to go!”
Devon has one friend, period. Chiamaka has no friends. What she does have is a coterie that consists of one (mostly) genial British girl and a vicious frenemy who’d love to steal her crown. (It’s hard to know which of them to pity, really.) But both of them are certain of one thing: this is THEIR year.
Aaaand wait for the other shoe to fall…
The author gives us these clichés…and then drops the boom on the reader. Devon is gay. Right, it’s the 21st century; nobody cares. But this is high school and people aren’t as progressive as you think. Devon is in the closet and that means he’s fair game for anybody who guesses his secret. So the author gives us a twist that is predictable yet cruel as hell and a perfect setup for scholastic bedlam that is certain to follow.
Suddenly I’m interested. Suddenly I’m invested in this story. Now I want to know what happens next. Cue the dramatic music.