Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Content Tags: LGBTQIA+, Transphobia, Abandonment, Emotional, Young Adult

Description from Storygraph:

From Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.

Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.

When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle....

But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.

Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.

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This book... I'm gonna need so much time to process the emotional roller coaster that it took me on. I was so invested in Felix and his journey! Many authors use tropes as easy plot devices and rest way too heavily on them, but not Kacen Callender. They expertly used tropes to develop the intensity and connection to the story. The "quasi-love triangle" bit for example has a tendency to leave me very angry that the author made the choices they did just to try and create drama that never really should've existed. But with Felix's situation, it was central to what he was experiencing and how he was learning and growing as a person. 

It's been a little while since a book hooked me so well that I literally could not stop reading before going to be. I so badly needed to know how Felix sorted everything out! I wish desperately that I'd had books like this available to me when I was younger. That I had known about identities that aren't your run-of-the-mill heteronormative, binary options. But I'm also so fucking grateful that there are more books and stories like this being told now. 

The characters were so alive and real. I loved some and absolutely despised others. Some were misunderstood and some were exactly who they presented. So many topics were explored in this book and none of them felt forced or out of place. I loved this story so much. 10/10. Highly recommend.

In conclusion:

Which scene has stuck with you the most?

I don't know that this counts as a "scene" that stuck with me, but this one portion stuck out to me:

"We all make mistakes. We all have a chance to learn and grow from them. But we all also have the right to choose whether we'll forgive someone for this mistakes they've made..."

Did reading the book impact your mood? If yes, how so?

1000% yes. I laughed, I cried, I felt anxious, I felt excited, I felt worried, I felt unloved, I felt reassured, I felt supported, I felt so connected to all of the things Felix was going through.

Added to TBR: February 2021

Removed from TBR: April 2023