Kat Barrell: Testing testing ….. is this thing on??? Dusting off the ol & for the big week!! DominiquePC and I on our press junket
today spilling the on all things WynonnaEarpVengeance Tubi
And back again for month number two. “Rainbow Boys” by Alex Sanchez
Stats:
Title: Rainbow Boys
Author: Alex Sanchez
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release Date: October 2001
Age Range: Young Adult (teens 14-19)
Summary: This angsty tale, follows three high school boys and their journey of coming out and exploring their sexuality. Jason Carrillo, the all-star athlete of the school. In his senior year, Jason is in line for scholarship and has an amazing high school sweet heart Debra. There is no possible way he is gay....right? However he does to decide to attend a meeting for gay youths and is thrown when he sees two of his classmates at the meeting. We following Jason as he questions his sexuality. The second boy we follow throughout the book Kyle Meeks. Kyle is your average likable kid. He overall gets decent grades and is active on his school swim team. He is struggling with himself because he is mostly in the closet. He knows himself to be gay, but struggles to be comfortable with himself enough to “let his freak flag fly” if you will. Finally we meet Nelson Glassman. He is the poster child if you will for the stereotypical gay boy. He is out and proud along with his mother who is strongly supportive of him. While Kyle and Nelson are best friends, Jason tends to avoid the both of them. But once the rumblings of a Gay, Straight, Alliance club begins to circulate throughout school, it is hard to keep everything under wraps and separated.
Review: This is truly an angsty teen novel, and I love this book for exactly that. While this book at times does seem slightly out dated and does lean on stereotypes I really enjoyed this book for the different perspectives. Many of books I have read up until this point usually about ONE gay character who is either struggling to come to terms or is being rejected after coming out. I enjoyed that as a reader I got to see different stages of coming out. I liked that all of the boys were in a different stage and also had a different story going on in the background. As the story progresses you learn and understand the pressures Jason’s alcoholic father put on his family. Kyle holds the middle ground. It is difficult to read his parents and what they really think about him being gay. Nelson deals with his separated parents and his emotions with his absent father. Nelson also struggles with his own self image. WARNING: unlike the “The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James” this books is very much a mature teen novel. It deals with sex, abuse, HIV scares, drinking/alcoholism, as well as some eating disorders. Personally I am bias towards Jason questioning stage, and Kyle’s shyness to fully come out to his family and friends. I did enjoy again the different perspectives and that each home life was slightly different. In seniors in high school it was interesting to see where each character drew the line of what they had to stand up for and where they needed to look to others for help/listen more. Rainbow Boys is the first in a triolgy the books that follow are Rainbow High and Rainbow Road. I do look forward to reading and finishing up the other two books. Again I would recommend this book to TEENS, because of the content and topics covered. If y’all are interested in reading please leave comments below what your thoughts on this book are.