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kricketa's review against another edition
2.0
another retro lesbian romance i found in teen fiction. i found it very similar to "hey, dollface!" because of the similar era, the moody main characters, the dread and doom of being queer, and the whole getting caught snuggling in bed together thing. and the unsatisfactory endings, in which the main characters decided they might just be fond of girls in a tender sisterly way. maybe in this era that was the only truly happy ending these authors could find for someone attracted to the same gender.
i just want a HAPPY teen lesbian book!
i just want a HAPPY teen lesbian book!
liralen's review against another edition
3.0
Lesbianism! It's just like sisterhood!
Okay. Look. If this book hadn't been published well before my birth, I would say that it was written with me in mind: boarding school! Possible lesbians! 1960s historical fiction! It's a freaking trifecta book*, which are about as rare as unicorns.
But, well. The boarding school is, alas, decidedly backdrop, despite how much of the action happens on campus. Ditto anything that happened in the 1960s. And the lesbians... Lexie, Possible Lesbian #1, is bona fide crazy; even Jinx (Possible Lesbian #2) admits it. Jinx is madly in love with Lexie but isn't sure what that means for her sexuality (or anything else), which is perfectly reasonable except that she doesn't care that Lexie is crazy. Possible Lesbian #3, or...actually, let me put it in the words of Jinx (ellipses in original): And it didn't seem weird and strange, it didn't seem like a crush, it seemed like two friends who are so close, who love each other so much, they're...they're like sisters (216).
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT.
There's actually a lot I appreciate about the book, even setting aside the part where it's a mythical trifecta book. That Jinx doesn't figure everything out, for example, and that she doesn't suddenly realise that she had it all wrong, that Lexie is insane but Jinx is after all a lesbian and totally has a thing for Possible Lesbian #3, who has by then morphed into Definite Lesbian #3. Jinx is still a teenager at the end of the book, with big changes ahead of her.
I said that the setting (in terms of time period) was really relegated to the background here, but I suppose that's not strictly true: major historical events are strictly background, yes. And this is a pretty conservative, preppy boarding school, so there's nothing like counterculture going on. But the timing influences everything about the attitudes: the idea that queerness is this terrible thing; expectations of dress and attitude; pretty much everything ever about Jinx's parents. (I told my mother that I'm still looking for a wildly romanticised piece of 60s/70s YA fiction—'good luck with that', she said skeptically—and that this was not it, and yeah, there are large parts of this story that make me pretty happy to have grown up in a different generation.)
This review is a little confused, but so am I, so perhaps it evens out.
*Trifecta book = hits three of my big reading interests
Okay. Look. If this book hadn't been published well before my birth, I would say that it was written with me in mind: boarding school! Possible lesbians! 1960s historical fiction! It's a freaking trifecta book*, which are about as rare as unicorns.
But, well. The boarding school is, alas, decidedly backdrop, despite how much of the action happens on campus. Ditto anything that happened in the 1960s. And the lesbians... Lexie, Possible Lesbian #1, is bona fide crazy; even Jinx (Possible Lesbian #2) admits it. Jinx is madly in love with Lexie but isn't sure what that means for her sexuality (or anything else), which is perfectly reasonable except that she doesn't care that Lexie is crazy. Possible Lesbian #3, or
Spoiler
MigginI DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH THAT.
There's actually a lot I appreciate about the book, even setting aside the part where it's a mythical trifecta book. That Jinx doesn't figure everything out, for example, and that she doesn't suddenly realise that she had it all wrong, that Lexie is insane but Jinx is after all a lesbian and totally has a thing for Possible Lesbian #3, who has by then morphed into Definite Lesbian #3. Jinx is still a teenager at the end of the book, with big changes ahead of her.
I said that the setting (in terms of time period) was really relegated to the background here, but I suppose that's not strictly true: major historical events are strictly background, yes. And this is a pretty conservative, preppy boarding school, so there's nothing like counterculture going on. But the timing influences everything about the attitudes: the idea that queerness is this terrible thing; expectations of dress and attitude; pretty much everything ever about Jinx's parents. (I told my mother that I'm still looking for a wildly romanticised piece of 60s/70s YA fiction—'good luck with that', she said skeptically—and that this was not it, and yeah, there are large parts of this story that make me pretty happy to have grown up in a different generation.)
This review is a little confused, but so am I, so perhaps it evens out.
*Trifecta book = hits three of my big reading interests
gwimo's review against another edition
3.0
Shall I say typical first time lesbian story. I gave it three stars for effort :)
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