If I Was Your Girl

This book has been on my TBR (to be read) pile for several months, mostly because based on the cover,  I needed to be in the mood for another girl lit romance. There is something about this cover that reminds me of a Nazi/Holocaust book, but I cannot place it. So maybe it was a lack of identity that kept me unmotivated to crack it open. For whatever reason, then, despite having access to a digital advanced copy, I let it sit in my Kindle, get published, and start to disappear into the rabbit hole that is my TBR pile.

That was a mistake.

This is the first book I have read by a transgender woman creating a fictional story about a transgender teen who not only has already transitioned, but also passes. She leaves her mother in Atlanta after she gets beaten up to live with her father in a small southern town and try to finish up her senior year. She is coming off of a recent hospitalization after she tried to commit suicide.

The secret of her being trans is not a spoiler. It is in the description and it is in the author's note at the beginning. But the secret, for Amanda, is difficult to keep. She wants to live a real life and hiding her truth from others keeps her from being authentic. The secret then is if she will tell, when and to what consequence.

I like Amanda's angst. I don't know how realistic it is, but if feels authentic. What makes reading so powerful is that it allows us to travel into other worlds and other cultures. Like Atticus says in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. . .until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.

I think the end is a little saccharine. But fiction allows us to suspend the ugly in the world and hold up hope like a beacon. I wish this had a better cover. Maybe one without a girl on it so that Amanda can be exactly how each reader imagines her to be. Otherwise, this is a good start to more stories like this.