This book was so hard to put down. I'm amazed by the depth of the characters, I feel like I knew almost every one of them so well, like I could picture every house and pond and car and (sugar-free) dessert that grandma made and every weird piece of stolen something that ended up in Cameron's dollhouse.

I loved the time period and setting- there's a lot that I don't know about what it's like to be a queer kid in the hyper-religious South. I was born in the 90s in liberal New England, where my middle school had a GSA and lots of my teachers, town council representatives, and neighbors were openly gay. This book was a really eye-opening, and sad, look at a lived experience very different from my own, and a super important read given that the vice president believes in and supports gay conversion.

My only criticism is that I wish more effort/ research went into Adam's character- a few sentences about him made me cringe and just felt pretty careless.