Stay Gold (Tobly McSmith)

Originally reviewed on May 31, 2024

a copy of Stay Gold. the cover is pink toned and depicts a young adult couple sitting on top of a car. the boy is in a white t shirt and jeans, looking towards the girl, who has long brown hair, a loose yellow t shirt, and jean shorts. behind them is the test stay cool stay strong stay you

"'But what they did is, like, a hate crime.' I am so hip to the lingo now that pony is my friend."

Towards the latter half of this book I had to push myself to finish it, and ended up just skimming the ending pages.

The edition my library has contains content warnings in the beginning, so I was not blindsided or upset by the constant stream of microaggressions and ignorant missteps from the characters.

This... Is an okay book. I understand that this isn't for me. I understand that this is for young adults and high schoolers and this is basically teaching them what a trans man is and what they may experience and do, and whether you're a cishet ally learning it through this "rom-com" story or a trans kid finding representation, there will be something for you.

But it is not for me, a 24 year old stealth trans man. And with the age thing, that's fine, I would say it's quite normal for a grown adult to not feel too invested in some high school romance story, but...

There is a strange lack of nuance and understanding with the concept of being stealth. I disagree with literally every character except Pony in this book, who all think it is lying and untruthful to be stealth. I can't help but take it personally. God forbid I don't open every conversation with a "Oh, before we start, allow me to inform you on what genitalia I was born with." Plus, you can be stealth in some places and out in others. I go do queer shit IRL all the time but I'm still stealth at work because I literally just don't need to inform my coworkers that?

I won't really press on the rest of the book too much because I believe it's flawed characters rather than flawed writing. It's unfortunately realistic that all the cis characters start ignorant, and I am against the idea that every LGBTQ character must be flawless and have no internalized self-hate and be Good Representation. So yeah I think I can't critique most of this because it's the characters not the writer. Except for that thing where a character's race is only mentioned when they aren't white. I think that was a writer flaw. And then of course, the obvious begrudging "You really really really should out yourself to everyone person you meet but UGHHHH FINEEE, I GUESS if it protects you from IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL DANGER then you can be closeted.. so long as you out yourself once the danger passes!" rhetoric. I do think this book would have gone smoother if the biggest character growth didn't happen within the last few pages. We didn't get any time with the non-asshole versions of any of these characters. And I guess that is a writing flaw and perhaps I do agree with the critiques that every character is unlikeable.

Dear any trans people reading this for the love of god don't pursue people like Georgia and don't befriend people like Max you deserve someone who doesn't need to be convinced to love you and a friend who respects your life choices especially when they regard your actual physical safety good lord

★☆☆☆☆