"It is such a privilege, you know? To get to be yourself, all of yourself, in this great big world."
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Amir Azadi is gay, and always knew that it would be difficult to come out to his Iranian family. When someone at his school finds out and threatens to out him if he doesn't pay up, he runs to Rome to escape, and make a new life for himself. How will the summer of his life end?
There were aspects of this book I liked, and aspects that missed the mark for me. I loved the set up of the book, how it jumped between two narratives - past and present, and how obvious it was which narrative we were in (denoted by italics for present day). This was also a super quick read for me, at under 250 pages, it's not a long book.
I also really enjoyed the various characters in the book. Although Amir was mostly a frustrating character, some of the secondary characters (Soraya and Valerio stand out to me) seemed well rounded and were great additions to the story. However, the overall character development was underwhelming, no one in the book, apart from maybe Amir, has much character development, and the story often glosses over any character that isn't Amir.
A lot of the storyline felt a little far fetched to me - somehow an 18-year-old made enough money editing Wikipedia pages to run away and live in Rome for a month? From the US? At one point he compares drag queens to clowns, hinting that he has no real idea what a drag queen is, but frequently uses drag-originated language; and displays many gay culture references, despite it being apparent he knows very little about gay culture due to his upbringing.
In terms of the writing, it was mostly well-written, the jumps between characters were obvious. However, towards the end it gets very messy. There are often instances where the narrative doesn't match who is supposed to be telling the story, and it feels very rushed. Also, I don't know if it was the version I had, but it sometimes (but not often enough to make you think it was deliberate!) jumped to a new paragraph in the middle of a sentence, which was pretty off-putting. I also don't think the ending was up to scratch, a bit wishy-washy, and didn't feel like any of the real problems that the books raises were solved.
I'd also like to mention that "the nipple story", as it's referred to throughout the book, needs to be removed. It is totally unnecessary, unrealistic, and adds nothing to the story other than a moment of disgust (although not apparently for Amir).
A bit of a mixed bag if I'm honest, the book is worth reading for the Iranian/LGBTQ+ angle, but not the best YA book I've ever read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Hot Key Books for this ARC
Pub date: 22nd September 2020
Content warnings: bullying, blackmail, sexual scenes
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