Messy Perfect
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- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
Perfect for fans of Mason Deaver and Becky Albertalli, this tender, raucous novel follows a rule-following, perfectionist teen who starts an underground GSA club at her conservative Catholic high school, from the acclaimed author of Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens.
Cassie Perera is a star student in St. Luke's junior class. But the new school year brings an unwelcome surprise—the return to St. Luke's of Cassie's former friend, Ben, who left a few years ago after a homophobic bullying incident Cassie knows she didn't do enough to prevent.
Still harboring guilt from her inaction, Cassie decides, in her usual, overzealous way, to team up with the neighboring public school to found an underground Gender and Sexuality Alliance—as a complicated strategy for making things up to Ben. Secretly, Cassie is also tempted by the possibility of opening up about her own sexuality for the first time.
As Cassie’s new friends urge her out of her comfort zone, she unlocks a kind of joy and freedom she’s never felt before—even as she struggles to balance these experiences with her typical tightrope of being the perfect daughter, student, and Catholic.
Cassie’s perfectly curated life unravels into turmoil, but can she embrace the mess enough to piece together something new?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Estranged former friends Cassie and Ben haven't spoken since an incident in sixth grade: after they were caught swapping school uniforms, fearful Cassie insisted it was Ben's idea, prompting their classmates to target him with homophobic bullying until he left for ballet school. Cassie has spent the past four years "focused on being a good student, a good daughter, a good Catholic." But Ben transferring into St. Luke's, Cassie's conservative Catholic high school, throws a wrench in those plans. Upon meeting students from a neighboring public school and learning about their Gender and Sexuality Alliance, Cassie, knowing that St. Luke's lacks one of its own, forms an underground GSA for students from both schools to come together, hoping to use the organization to repair her relationship with Ben. As Cassie learns about queer culture and identity, she strives to promote diversity and inclusion at St. Luke's, contemplates the dynamic between religion and queerness, and contends with her own identity. Boteju (Bruised) employs grounded and informative prose to deliver empathetic examinations of acceptance, guilt, and the pressure of meeting unrealistic expectations in this tenderly affirming novel. Characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 13–up.
