Reviews with content warning for Death - Stay Gold

This debut was mostly enjoyable and I did end up rating it 3.5 stars. Though there is one bigger issue I had with it that didn’t really get addressed in the book.

So let’s talk about it first! My issue is one of the side characters, Max, who is best friends with our main character, Pony, & both of which are trans boys. Max throughout most of the book is continually trying to force Pony to come out at Pony’s new school where no one knows he is Trans. Max is an advocate of sorts for the Trans community and is trying to push Pony to join him but in doing so it might raise questions & Pony is not ready to come out as trans. This is a common thing unfortunately but the thing that pisses me off is that it’s not rectified. After Pony does choose to come out they just go back to being best buds… He is never called out. No one even acknowledges that it’s not cool what Max is doing. He doesn’t really apologies and that really grinds my gears. It’s the same thing as Leah from Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli all over again.

Besides that it was quite a fun read which deals with some heavy topics in a realistic & inspiring way. This does follow dual POV between Georgia & Pony as well which I always enjoy if done right. Georgia & Pony both had unique voices & both were enjoyable to read from.

Georgia did has some internal issues but those were all thought through and she developed nicely as a character coming to terms with what’s going on around her. I feel like some people might not be a fan of her for the choices she made and I get it. I don’t agree with her actions and if I was friends with her in high school I would definitely call her out for it. Though I’m also not that far out of high school really and can see how between being faced with everything + being a cheerleader in high school where everyone is judgy little assholes would make it hard to come to terms with what was going on instantly. It makes for a realistic character. She also learnt & grew as a character and realised that her actions were wrong. Which is what is important in character growth for me.

Pony also developed throughout the book, though I did find his POV a little flat in comparison to Georgia for some reason. He was a very enjoyable character and though I can’t speak for the representation directly I did see the similarities between his experiences and most high school experiences as an LGBTQ+ person, like myself.

Overall, I don’t think Max needed to be the way he was or even present in the story. As no one from Pony’s school knew the bloke he was kind of pointless to the narrative in general so…. Enough about that though. I would recommend giving this one a read out of Tobly McSmiths’ two novels. Besides Max it was quite enjoyable, inspiring, fast paced & the audiobook is quite well done!

Content Warnings

emordnilap's review against another edition

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challenging emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

PLEASE CHECK CW!!!! it’s a very white book but other than that i loved it!!

Content Warnings

ohnoits_arcturus's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

rayne_1906's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Audiobook - 6 hours 12 minutes - I have a lot of issues with this book. I think there were bad messages and representation present in the book. On the surface, the plot is fine. It's very cliched, and predictable and convenient, but not bad. Just not particularly good. I found the characters very shallow and boring. I couldn't really tell you anything about the main characters. Pony doesn't really seem to have many personality traits other than 'trans' and 'obsessed with girl he just met'. While being trans can be a massive part of someone's life, it isn't the only part, and I think this just made the character feel two-dimensional and hard to connect with. He just never felt like a real person. Georgia felt a little 'not like other girls'. She wasn't a huge offender, not compared to some main characters in other books, but it still felt like she was 'special' for having a personality outside of cheerleading. She was also very shallow at times, and this didn't make her very likeable at all.
However, there are parts of this book that just really don't sit right with me. For one, the message being conveyed seems to be 'if you aren't openly trans, you are not a good person'. While the opposite is touched upon, the overarching theme is that the main character is a better person once he starts becoming an 'activist'. Activism is obviously important, but I think its wrong to assume a trans person must actively be 'helping' the community to have worth. Trans people should be allowed to exist just as they want to. Being openly trans is obviously what some people want, but the expectation that this applies to all trans people just isn't accurate.
Overall, this book, on surface-level, wasn't objectively bad, but I think it contained messages and themes that weren't particularly good.

Content Warnings

seawarrior's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I really wasn't into this book... and at points I just wanted to quit reading. Pony and Georgia weren't interesting people to me, they both seemed shallow and self-absorbed, so I had a difficult time feeling invested in their motivations, much less their love story. Pony kinda skates along acting toxically masculine throughout the book and isn't given opportunity to truly grow out of that mindset or denounce it. I was honestly really appalled by how he was behaving and how remorseless he felt about it. I transitioned at the same age he did, at the same point in time that he did, and never felt pressured to act as he did, and have known plenty of other trans masculine people who would never dream of behaving so offensively just to pass. It's not a requirement, even around hyper-masculine guys, to go around being misogynistic and LGBTphobic just to be stealth, and I'm sick and tired of young trans boys being convinced otherwise. Pony slightly redeems himself at the end, but I really wasn't satisfied with his character progression, and I still left the story with a sour taste in my mouth.

Ironically I enjoyed listening to Georgia's voice more, though she also behaves LGBTphobically for immature and downright ridiculous reasons. Her act of redemption is more solid and purposeful by the end. My favorite character in the story was probably Ted London, and I was disappointed that he mostly seemed used as a plot device. I didn't feel satisfied with his development either.

My other main issue was how there was never really a balance that Pony and Max found between accepting that some people need to be stealth for their own physical and mental safety, and that they can still stick up for other LGBT+ people at the same time. By the end this story read almost like a cautionary tale regarding both their perspectives, but they never even opened a dialogue about it.

I think the high points of this story are the messages that life continues after being outed, life continues after assault, life continues when binding becomes too dangerous to repeat, life continues when you have to wait for gender affirming medical interventions, life continues after being rejected or mocked for your gender and it continues even when you wish you weren't living it. Trans youth have so much more strength and grit than they usually give themselves credit for. And they're often surrounded by so much more love than they know. I was happy that these ideas were reflected in the book, but mostly at the very end, and only very briefly in comparison with the previous pages. I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to others. It's not totally terrible, but I had a lot of issues with the characters and with the narrative that went unresolved.

Content Warnings

lucnmn's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This one was an easy read and I liked it but at the same time the characters annoyed me a lot and it just wasn’t anything special because I read similar stories before but nevertheless it was an enjoyable read and it is certainly an important book for some people.

Content Warnings

xoodlebooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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ashheinrich's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This was extremely frustrating to read. Everything was so misogynistic and the message was basically queer and trans people will suffer until they come out, at which time the suffering will escalate. Being trans was also compared to being a secret writer lmfao

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