raered5's review
5.0
Love this book, love all the sites of where they went, and the LGBT community they discover. Love the christian and gay conflicts.
angieinbooks's review
3.0
I really enjoyed this for the most part. H.F. is a wonderful narrator and an interesting character, and I think this is where the narrative excels.
So H.F. lives in a small Kentucky town where she's one of two gay kids. Her mother had her when just was a teenager and then quickly bounced when H.F. was still a baby. She has no idea who her father is. But she has her memaw, a deeply religious woman who has tried to raise H.F. right. After a disastrous first kiss the new girl and accidentally stumbling upon an address for her mother, H.F. and her very gay BFF take a roadtrip to Florida to meet her.
There's nothing particularly groundbreaking to this story. I came to it expecting a story about the intersection of faith with queer identity and, while it's there, it wasn't what I was expecting since H.F. doesn't believe in God. H.F. is not bothered that she's queer; she just knows she can't come out while she lives in her town with her memaw, so it's not a coming out story. And it's definitely not a romance.
But H.F. is compelling in her own right. I loved the way she speaks and thinks and confronts her own biases over and over.
This story was first published in 2011 and it definitely feels dated, but I still enjoyed it.
So H.F. lives in a small Kentucky town where she's one of two gay kids. Her mother had her when just was a teenager and then quickly bounced when H.F. was still a baby. She has no idea who her father is. But she has her memaw, a deeply religious woman who has tried to raise H.F. right. After a disastrous first kiss the new girl and accidentally stumbling upon an address for her mother, H.F. and her very gay BFF take a roadtrip to Florida to meet her.
There's nothing particularly groundbreaking to this story. I came to it expecting a story about the intersection of faith with queer identity and, while it's there, it wasn't what I was expecting since H.F. doesn't believe in God. H.F. is not bothered that she's queer; she just knows she can't come out while she lives in her town with her memaw, so it's not a coming out story. And it's definitely not a romance.
But H.F. is compelling in her own right. I loved the way she speaks and thinks and confronts her own biases over and over.
This story was first published in 2011 and it definitely feels dated, but I still enjoyed it.
iffer's review
3.0
Finding H.F. addresses several issues, going beyond the typical “coming out” theme in books labeled as GLBT, and addressing regional, educational, religious, and socioeconomic differences in America. In fact, the main character, H.F., short for Heavenly Faith, the name that her devout Southern Baptist grandmother gave her, doesn’t even come out to her grandmother. Rather, Finding H.F. is, in the words on the back of the paperback version of the novel, about a “life waiting…that is very different from what they’ve known, and the concept of family is more far-reaching than they ever could have expected”; it’s a story of H.F. and her best friend Bo’s journey to explore the world beyond the small coal-mining town in which they have grown up, learn about themselves and their place in the world, and return to their home, changed. I suppose that, in a way, Finding H.F. is the quintessential Joseph Campbell-esque hero’s quest in the form of the American road trip infused with GLBT themes. Julia Watt’s writing is engaging, and I could imagine H.F.’s voice in my head thinking her thoughts out loud. Furthermore, while the novel ends hopefully, as children’s books should, it doesn’t downplay the hardships in its characters lives or the lives of those like them. The characters are well-developed, and seem like real people with plausible motivations that one could meet. I think that this novel also succeeds in presenting portraying individuals as complex, avoiding stereotypes about Northerners and Southerners, country folk and city folk, heterosexuals and homosexuals, blacks and whites, religious and non-religious, etc.
Perhaps one of the things that struck me most was the way in which Julia Watts chose the meeting with H.F. and her mother to play out in the end. I think that I would’ve felt cheated if H.F.’s mother really had welcomed her with open arms, or had ended up getting a college education and a good job. That sort of ending would’ve had the hollowness of deus ex machina. Although the ending was sad, it was a complex and realistic portrayal of humans and the cycles in which they are often trapped. Although Finding H.F. does not sugar-coat things, as is evidenced by H.F.’s mother, H.F.’s inability to tell her grandmother about her sexual orientation, and Laney’s disappearance, it does offer hope at the end, the hope that we can all find a place where we belong where people love an understand us.
Perhaps one of the things that struck me most was the way in which Julia Watts chose the meeting with H.F. and her mother to play out in the end. I think that I would’ve felt cheated if H.F.’s mother really had welcomed her with open arms, or had ended up getting a college education and a good job. That sort of ending would’ve had the hollowness of deus ex machina. Although the ending was sad, it was a complex and realistic portrayal of humans and the cycles in which they are often trapped. Although Finding H.F. does not sugar-coat things, as is evidenced by H.F.’s mother, H.F.’s inability to tell her grandmother about her sexual orientation, and Laney’s disappearance, it does offer hope at the end, the hope that we can all find a place where we belong where people love an understand us.
paytiebean's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
ksparks's review against another edition
3.0
This love story, coming of age and road trip novel is well-written, funny and true. You could say it's wish fulfillment for a lesbian teen from a conservative Christian southern town--but it's a realistic kind of dream come true. This is no Thelma and Louise story. It's a sad statement but true that changing your geography changes everything if you are a lesbian growing up in that situtation. Having grown up in the south and moved north, I'm well aware of that. But a nice thing about this story is that H.F. finds a way to reconcile who she is with where she comes from.
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