This book goes on sale tomorrow, and all I can say is that Casey is three for three on books that make me roll with laughter, choke up, and surge with hope. Unlike RWRB and OLS, Shara Wheeler is a YA novel, but it never underestimates its reader, delivering a plot that makes you just about as obsessed as Chloe is with the hunt for the missing prom queen, Shara. This story tackles religious conservativism, gender/sexual identity, the red state/blue state divide, among other themes, but the theme that spoke most to me was about truly seeing people as they are, as opposed to through the filter we unwittingly apply through a combination of social conditioning and our own hidden wounds.
For that reason, I painted Chloe seeing Shara through a looking glass. <3
I can’t recommend this one enough y’all. Grown-up readers: You will love it too! (I sure did!)
There’s another part where Ash says, “I thought maybe I was actually a boy, because I wanted to be feminine the way boys can be feminine” and all I can think about is that solid year of my life where I was convinced I was a trans man because I felt so out of place in my body.
Happy Pride month! And what better time to share my latest book haul than now? I’ve heard only good things about these three books and I can’t wait ‘til I have time to read them!
I just finished reading “I Kissed Shara Wheeler”. This book affected me so much. Being a queer kid at a religious school when you aren’t religious is torture. Being a queer kid at a religious school when you ARE religious is torture. The experience is something that I have literally never seen in a book before. I have never felt so seen reading any piece of literature in my life. Casey McQuiston got EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of going to a private christian school right. mandatory chapel? fucking bible class? gendered dress code? the homophobia? the racism? the rules and regulations that make no fucking sense? Not only the good, but some of the bad too.
Casey McQuinston writing I Kissed Shara Wheeler: So I wrote this book and its going to call out and maybe emotionally injure the gays, the burnt out gift kids,people with religious trauma and people wanting genuine friendships xoxo enjoy.
Am I just supposed to move on from a book where there is a renegade prom queen, a bisexual with a general disdain for everyone, a hopeless romantic songwriter who’d do anything rather than show a hint of emotion and a emotional support jock with sunshine energy who might be genderqueer?? I think not.
There was this one weekend, a million summers ago, when I sat on the shore drinking a frozen limeade, and I realized the only thing I wanted to look at was the way the sun hit the girls swimming in the lake. The problem has always been this: When I look at you, I taste lime, and I see light on water.
y’all i just finished i kissed shara wheeler and ya girl is drowning in the conservative-religious-southern-small-town-closeted-queer nostalgia right now oh my god
