Girls Like Girls

YA romance 😍 💓 💗 💛 💕 💖 

     "And now I have no mom and a dad who barely has a hold on the meaning of that word, and there are way too many things simmering under my skin.  Secrets that are more like truths when you winnow them down:

     I'm not like other girls."

     Coley, protagonist of Hayley Kiyoko's Girls Like Girls, had known that her mother suffered from serious bouts of depression.  Still she never guessed her mom would leave her...

     ...until she came home and found her body.

     "I can't think about it.  If I do then I'll think about that day and the weeks before, and that will lead to the months when I was telling myself it was okay, but I know it wasn't.  And it'll all circle into: WHY weren't you better, Coley?  Why weren't you faster?  Why didn't you realize how bad it was?"

     As if that isn't bad enough, she's being sent from the city she's lived in just about all her life to a rural area she calls "Bumfuck Nowhere, Oregon" to live with the father who walked out on her and her mom when she was three and until he became her only living relative never looked back.  She doesn't know how to relate tol a father.  She's sure that Curtis has no clue how to parent.  She believes they're both looking forward to her turning eighteen when they can drop the pretense of family.

     She doesn't think she'll make friends.  It's not like she'll have anything in common with her new neighbors.

     When Coley nearly gets hit by a car she meets someone she'd like to be more than friends with.  But Sonya is heart breakingly unpredictable.  Sometimes she seems to reciprocate Coley's feelings only to pull back, especially when her friends are around.  She has a real jerk of an ex boyfriend who seems determined to pull her back to heteronormativity.

     The story behind the book is as compelling as the narrative itself.  It's based on a song Kiyoko cowrote.  She spent her last $5,000 on a video which she posted on YouTube.  At that point she had 9,000 subscribers.  Much to her surprise it got millions of views.

     "All I ever wanted was to find a community of belonging, to feel worthy and enough.  All of a sudden, there they were, millions of people who reminded me I wasn't alone in my queerness.  My fans, you."

On a purrrsonal note, for some reason I wasn't able to post for about 6 days and now just as inexplicably I am.  Anyway sorry about the delay.  I've got lots of good content to send your way.  :)  The picture I sent before this is of Tobago caught in the act of knocking a trash 🗑 over and pulling out the contents.  (Jules)

Hey, you can't be too careful.  You never know what could be lurking in trash 🗑 s.  (Tobago)

A great big shout out goes out to you, our readers.

Tobago and Jules Hathaway 

Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone