Julie Anne Peters has a heart which resonates sympathetically with the struggles of her characters--people who, even in the twenty-first century, still find themselves marginalized as outcasts for their variant sexual identities. Peters wins the reader's sympathy for these characters by allowing us to peer through these young people's hearts as they navigate a disapproving world. In "Can't Stop the Feeling," we feel the ambivalence of a girl who is trying to summon the courage to walk into her first Gay-Straight Alliance meeting. In "Outside/Inside," we feel the romantic jitters of a girl trying to choose the perfectly-messaged Hallmark Card for her (same sex) crush. In "Boi," we feel our hearts humiliated right along with Vince, a trans youth, as he is bullied and viciously violated in a manner so cruel I literally gasped.
"My god doesn't scorn or condemn me," says Aimee in the story 'Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder.' "My god is kind and benevolent and accepting. We made a secret pact. I'd be the best person I could be and God would save me a place in Heaven. My heaven. The real one, where it doesn't matter who you are or how you look or how you sacrifice your dignity and self-respect most days just to be true to yourself" (page 77). Julie Anne Peters wishes for a warm and welcoming world--for everyone. Through these short stories, which allowed this (straight white male) reader to empathize with Peters' characters' pain at being excluded, Peters' enlightening fiction shows how short-stories might invite us to make Aimee's Heaven a place on Earth.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1740439250
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