I like to read.  Specifically, I like to read books about young adult fiction with queer characters.  Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re bad, sometimes they’re so awkwardly right on it’s painful to read.  I’ll be posting reviews every now and then of the things I pick up along my way.  Some of them are new, some of them are old, but feel free to let me know what you think of them if you’ve read them before!  To see all of my reviews, search the tag #alexreadsgaystuff.
My first review is of Getting It by Alex Sanchez.
 
A few years back, I read the Rainbow Road series by Alex Sanchez.  I honestly can’t tell you too much about it other than I liked it enough to speed-read through all three books over the course of a week or so.  Because of the good memories associated with that, despite the details being a little fuzzy, I decided to pick up the book Getting It by the same author.
 
I’d need to reread his other books to make a comparison, but this one was okay.  It’s the story of Carlos, a straight boy with the hots for one of the more popular girls in school, Roxy.  However, he’s kind of a scrub - your typical unkempt, messy, uncaring teenage boy - so she doesn’t take much interest in him.  He gets the idea to talk to the one gay guy in school, Sal, to help make him over Queer Eye style so that Roxy will hook up with him.  Sal agrees, but there’s one major stipulation: Carlos has to help him start a GSA at his school.

All in all, the book was pretty cheeseball in parts, but I liked several things about it.  First of all, I really liked that it was written from the point of view of a homophobic straight kid overcoming his fears of contracting “gay” just from being around someone that’s out and proud.  I don’t know of a lot of books that take that perspective and it was interesting to me to see into the mind of a fairly “typical” teen and to see his point of view on being gay and where homophobia stems from.  I think books like this could be key in bridging the gap between queer folks and non-queer folks, and help those that don’t play on our team become allies as well as help those of us in the rainbow to understand why people are uncomfortable or scared of our identities.