I really liked this book! I'm lov the disaster women.

it was really interesting to read the Social Aspects Of Gender stuff. it's a topic I'm already familiar with etc etc, but always down to read more. this book in particular made me feel like I've been missing massive amounts of Social Stuff — like everyone else is aware of all the currents in the ocean (even if they can't necessarily see or verbalise them the way Reese and Ames/y do) and I can barely make out the waves. like. I am Aware of gender-currents stuff existing and I'm A Feminist and I'm not even cis, just, seeing Amy in particular narrating some stuff from her childhood/teenhood made me feel like — like how Reese did at the essential oils party!! people really do that?? live like that??

(I suspect it's, the neurotype thing. obvs nd people including me are not immune to social constructs including gender, but I think the neurotype thing is relevant here. also I am not a transgender woman :P)

I would like to read more books in this vein, esp with autistic protagonists (or not-necessarily-autistic-but-similar-intrinsic-difficulty-understanding-The-Socials), other-flavours-of-trans protagonists (including butch/masc trans women), and protagonists of colour! not in a zero-sum way, to be clear (hopefully that's the right phrasing for what I mean)!

I figured I'd find it like I found Nevada, which is to say, I'm glad the book exists and that I read it but it wasn't to My Personal Taste (genre reasons afaict — I don't typically read slice-of-life). but that was not an issue this time, which is interesting because Detransition, Baby! is also slice-of-life!

hopefully this all makes sense etc etc; writing things on mobile is a Bad Idea for coherency!