It happened guys! If you follow my blog for a while, you have seen Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender being mentioned a lot. And that’s not too strange as this book is on my TBR since 2020. However, other books kept demanding a priority spot over this and this is partially due to me outgrowing young adult books. I needed a bit of a break from all the YA novels on my TBR in order to hopefully enjoy them once again. I was facing a genre bore-out. I still am, and YA still isn’t my go-to genre anymore, but now I felt ready for this novel. Even though the characters are half my age. Was picking this book up after five years a good decision?

About the book

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
Published by Balzer + Bray on May 5, 2020
Pages: 360
ISBN: 9780062820259
Genres: Contemporary, Young adult
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From Stonewall and Lambda Award–winning author Kacen Callender comes a revelatory YA novel about a transgender teen grappling with identity and self-discovery while falling in love for the first time.
Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. What’s worse is that, even though he is proud of his identity, Felix also secretly fears that he’s one marginalization too many—Black, queer, and transgender—to ever get his own happily-ever-after.
When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle….
But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.
Felix Ever After is an honest and layered story about identity, falling in love, and recognizing the love you deserve.

My review

Expectations

As this novel has been sitting on my TBR quite forgotten since 2020, my expectations weren’t that high anymore. As mentioned before, I thoroughly have outgrown YA because of the life experience of these characters not matching to my own anymore. So, identifying to them is pretty hard for me. However, this is a pride book that explores different themes, which always makes me curious. Because let’s face it, I love to read as diverse as possible as diversifying my reading brings so much more depth to my literature. Plus, I love my pride books!

Characters

Unfortunately, I am not the biggest fan of any of the characters in this book. Which is not coming in handy for a character driven story. This has nothing to do with the age gap between them and me, but everything with their attitude. None of them get my sympathy vote, okay maybe except for Lea. Main character Felix is so distant and closed-of, he deeply seems to mistrust people (and maybe rightfully so after past trauma), and his friends aren’t much better. In fact, they were all quite jerks. Ezra is Felix’ biggest support system and once the story progresses, Lea is able to join the pack. Felix and Ezra are pretty tight knit though. This doesn’t mean I like him. Honestly, his behaviour of smoking weed and partying all night long stooped against me. The other students at their high school make nasty remarks along the way but disguise themselves as an ally. Thankfully Felix is done with their bullshit at some point, and this makes him grow exponentially. He finally finds the courage to stand up for himself and chose his own happiness above all expectations people have of him. After transitioning, he still struggles with his identity and that brings me to my next point.

Themes

Callender explores a variety of different themes. Transphobia, deadnaming, bullying, peer pressure and needing to meet other people’s expectations are some of them. However, the biggest theme in this story is discovering your true identity. Felix is born female but always felt masculine. He therefore transitioned a few years ago. However, he often still questions himself to which gender he belongs. He doesn’t feel both feminine and masculine, but what is his real identity? This question makes him insecure, which is probably the reason for his behaviour to the people around him. This insecurity has been explored well. Actually, all of the themes are elaborated well which kept me engaged in Felix’ story after all. They carry the plot as nothing else does.

Writing

The author has a pretty straight forward writing style. Not flowery at all, what you see is what you get. This fits the genre and target audience. Contemporary novels shouldn’t be written flowery and everything, and the language shouldn’t be hard to understand for the target audience which mainly consists of younger readers. I therefore was able to finish this book pretty fast. This also has to do with the earlier mentioned exploration of such important themes.

My verdict

I’m glad I finally read Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. This book was long overdue as it has been sitting on my TBR for five years. Unfortunately, the characters are pretty unsympathetic which is never good for a character driven story. The plot is carried by them, but more by the themes the author explores. The biggest one is gender identity. All of these themes are explored in depth. These kept me engaged, but apart from this, this is quite a forgettable book. I had the same feeling with This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story by the same author. Maybe these books aren’t a good fit for me anymore after all? Who knows!