Felix Ever After
A Stonewall Honor Book * A Time Magazine Best YA Book of All Time
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.
"Felix is attending an ultracompetitive arts summer program to have a better shot at a full scholarship to Brown when someone posts Felix's dead name beside photos of him, pre-transition, in the school's lobby. Felix's plot to get revenge throws him onto the path of love and self-discovery." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List")
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Community Reviews
This book is so important for the trans and LGBTQIA+ community, shedding light on the issues that trans folk face, even from their own LGBTQI+ communities. I'm incredibly grateful for this, even though it pained me to read.
There were times at the beginning that Felix's character erred on the side of questionable, and that I found it hard to relate to him. But overall, this book filled me with a lot of joy, and heartache and happiness - it's a very modern piece of writing that young people will easily connect with, and carries with it very important messages and conversations.
The authors notes are especially poignant after reading the novel, and I'm sure that many readers will feel what Callender felt in their mid twenties with Adam.
To all LGBTQIA+ peeps and especially trans and enby folk YOURE DOING AMAZING
This is a friends to enemies to... something story. It deals with the themes of family, found family, friendships, allyship, negotiating trying to understand your gender identity, and what it means to be trans.
There were moments that I was cringing while reading Felix going down these instagram hate spirals and making choices that the reader knew were going to come back on him badly. Watching Felix make mistakes and struggle with his identity and his relationship to his mostly supportive father and his total loss of a relationship with the mother who walked on on him were hard, but so worth it as we get to see Felix coming into himself through painful realizations and learning to trust friendships.
I also owe this book a debt of gratitude for introducing me to the term demi-boy and demi-girl, I had heard them in passing before, but didn’t really know what they meant. Thanks Felix (and Kacen) for the education :)
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