Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Stay Gold

advertised as a romantic ya story between trans boy and a cis girl of different parts of the hs hierarchy......... what we got was much darker and more traumatic than promised
i am not trans so i redirect you to check out some ownvoices reviewers but after reading/watching other such reviews,, i am better able to catch the unaddressed misogyny, (internalized and external) transphobia, and how the characters never seemed to grow out of that mindset or properly apologize for their actions and words
it felt like that era of fanfiction that wrote super traumatic whump for the angst that you would read and cry to, which is valid in its own way, but definitely not forewarned, which seems problematic, esp. when targeted towards young (trans) audiences
extra 0.5 stars because their flirty banter was nerdy and fun and made me chuckle and the writing (audiobook) was able to wring some tears from my eyes; the rest of the banter was a little far on what "teen-speak" is, though based on my old croon's 4 year old memory of high school

Content Warnings

rayne_1906's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

Go to review page

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

xoodlebooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

More...