AnnaLund2011

This started out slowly, almost on a hesitant note. Almost as if the author wasn’t sure about what to do with these boys.

I’m not sure I know what to do with them, myself, but the author did a brilliant job in bringing them alive, while painting a great backdrop.

It cannot be underlined too often how damaging the bigotry of harsh parenting can be. How much it can stunt and hurt a young soul.

You get the kids you get, and it is your darned duty to love them as they are.

AS THEY ARE, I tell you.

Hugo’s parents did a wonderful job. Kevin’s parents did not.

This is a story of young love and about discovering sexuality, discovering friendship and love. It is also about death and suffering, and how having to hide who you are can feel like dying too.

It is a truly beautiful story, and I am so glad it got written. We need more of these, for the young ones in our midst who might need to see that there is hope and other ways of doing it.

And Hugo’s mom? The best. The very, very best.

Kudos to the author for concentrating this story to the teen years of these two boys—it is truly beautiful. Harmony Ink has been printing a lot of really good books lately, so kudos to them, too. This is both necessary work and a worthy thing.

The world needs to see that love is simply love.

***

I was given an ARC of this book for free from the publisher, Harmony Ink Press.

A positive review was neither expected nor promised in return. 

The author is a Twitter friend, but she knows that I review with my own head, and not through friendship-filters.