Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas - 5 stars

[Flo]

So I guess the author took my high school experience and wrote a whole book about it.

Seriously though, I didn’t go to a Quaker school, but I did go to an all-girls’ Catholic prep school from 5th to 12th grade that had all their own little traditions and quirks that would make no sense to someone who hadn’t attended it. I spent most of my lunches in junior and senior year hanging out with my teachers. I was super involved in theatre and choir throughout high school. In junior year, I met an online friend who I had a really close, co-dependent relationship with, and while we did not write fanfiction about our classmates, we did write RPF on AIM. I was out, and she wasn’t (though I think at this point, she actually is out as well as far as I know). And in senior year, our relationship abruptly ended (but we did reconnect a year later for another couple years before losing touch again…and I still think about her from time to time).

So yeah, this was a book about me.

It was also a book about nostalgia, finding (or struggling to find) one’s own identity, friendship and what that means, and coming of age in the 2000s while not fitting in with the status quo. I loved this book because it brought back so many memories for me while also being a really great story with ample character development and a nail-biting relationship between two people that kept me wanting to read more. I found the relationship between Nell and Fay fascinating—and the way that the author wrote the different POVs by having Nell and Fay share a POV to illustrate how co-dependent they were at the height of their friendship was fascinating and also worked really well.

I related more to Nell in most ways but also felt bad for Fay while wanting to shake some sense into her at the same time. I was just like WTF are you doing??? regarding most of the decisions that she made. Her self-sabotaging was particularly tragic because I feel like she had so much potential, especially as she realized how much she needed/wanted Nell in her life but felt like she had to punish herself. Even at the end of the book, she is clearly unhappy and unfulfilled…though I like to imagine that she finds the courage to come out of the closet and transition in the future. I read a review that although Nell is doing better than Fay in so many ways at the end of the book, she is still struggling more with blame and rage from high school even 15 years later, which I thought was such an interesting interpretation and made me think about that whole ending differently.

They were both just so real and well-written and fully realized and devastating in their decisions to hurt one another in ways that were both on purpose and not. The author captures the confusion of figuring out oneself, not only in terms of adolescence, but also in terms of being gay and different from everyone else. I was Nell and Fay’s age in 2007-2008 as opposed to 2002 when this book was set, so things were definitely much more progressive by then, but I still related to just the general difficulty of growing up and figuring it all out.

Also lol wtf Theo is like a fucking psychopath and I hope he steps on all the Legos forever.

In general, the author totally and completely captured what it was like to be a queer high schooler living in the 200s and attending a preppy religious school that was essentially its own little world. I read a couple interviews with him and it seems like he drew a lot from his own experience (also so interesting that he didn’t realize he was trans till after writing Fay’s story and then transitioning after!!!). I really hope this author writes more books, because if they are anything like this book, I would 100% read them. I would recommend this book to my fellow millennials who grew up struggling with their own sexuality, former theatre kids, and people in general who are interested in reading about characters you can’t help but love and the devastating decisions they make.