Kat (Lost in Neverland)'s Reviews > Symptoms of Being Human

As someone who identifies as genderfluid, I'm glad to read a book like this. I'm glad there's a YA book about this identity and that the reader is never actually told what gender Riley was born as. Riley is Riley, a human being, sometimes dressing 'like a guy' and sometimes dressing 'like a girl' but mostly somewhere in between.

However, I did have some issues.

The parody of Tumblr in the form of 'Bloglr' was cringe-worthy, and I honestly didn't want to read further because of it. I don't care about Tumblr, but being someone who is on it, it made me wince any time it was mentioned or as Riley become 'Bloglr famous' in a matter of days (an impossible feat, based on what they posted). It made the majority of the story really cheesy, but I guess it's an accurate representation of how a lot of LGBT individuals come out, by having a profile on a social media where they can feel safe. Seeing it in a book format is just a bit uncomfortable, to say the least.

I feel like Riley was very lucky in that they were born with an extremely gender-neutral name. Another character, who later came out as transgender, also had a very gender-neutral name; it only bothered me a little, as most transgender/genderqueer people are not lucky enough to be born with a gender-neutral name.

Maybe it was just me, but Riley seemed to overreact about a lot of things. They nearly freak out the first time they walk into school and a girl refers to them as 'it', or people asking 'is that a boy or a girl?'
As someone who dresses fairly androgynously sometimes, things like that don't bother me in the slightest. Hell, I even think it's funny. Riley thought it was the end of the world, but I don't think most genderfluid/genderqueer people think that as an issue. If you're transgender, yes, because being perceived as a specific gender is important to them.
As a genderfluid person, being perceived as a specific gender is not important to me. Sometimes I'll dress outlandishly feminine, and other days I'll be extremely masculine. Other days I'll be somewhere in the middle, in which my goal is for people to wonder about my gender. It's part of who I am and when people are confused, it's not a big deal. But that may just be me. I can't make that assumption for other genderfluid people.

Riley is also quite young (16), so maybe they haven't developed that 'fuck it' attitude.

Overall it's a short, quick read, and I'm very happy more books like this are starting to become mainstream. When I was 14/15, just starting to read YA books, I never had books like this, so I'm glad the younger readers will have these more diverse books to grow up with and stumble across, maybe discovering things about their own identity earlier on.