2024 the best human being in the world review

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(as of Dec 24, 2024 17:38:08 UTC - Details)

Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist * YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers * ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults List * 2017 Rainbow List

A sharply honest and moving debut perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Ask the Passengers.

Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley isn't exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in über-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley's life.

On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it's really like to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley's starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley's real identity, threatening exposure. And Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything.

From debut author Jeff Garvin comes a powerful and uplifting portrait of a modern teen struggling with high school, relationships, and what it means to be human.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Balzer + Bray; Reprint edition (November 14, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 006238287X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0062382870
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 - 17 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ HL760L
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 9 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
Reviewer: Nicole Hoefs
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Amazing Debut!
Review: I really loved this book. I was so happy that I was part of the Sunday Street Team for this book, and was able to review an eARC from Edelweiss. This book was definitely 5 out of 5 stars in my opinion.This is a diverse novel, with the main character identifying as gender fluid. The story really sucks you in. A few things throughout the book were kind of predictable, at least to me, but I think I’m a pretty good guesser at what’s going to happen in a book. I loved seeing the world through Riley’s eyes, learning more about what being gender fluid really means. The writing was unique and absolutely beautiful. My stomach was full of butterflies, and a smile overtook my face often while reading. I even cried some.Besides my enormous love for Riley, I really liked Bec as well. Solo was okay at parts, especially towards the last half of the book. Riley’s parents annoyed me here and there throughout the book. They were too demanding; helicopter parents always hovering and bugging Riley. I thought the blog posts were really interesting and informative. The romance wasn’t very prominent in the book, but I loved it nevertheless. The pairing was absolutely adorable.I didn’t find any book boyfriends in this book, but it was definitely still worth the read. The parts where I cried, my heart felt like it was breaking. I don’t want to say what happened, because it would spoil the book, but wow, just wow.Some of my favorite lines: “‘Why does that make you think I’m from the Midwest?’ Solo shrugs. ‘Where else could you develop such contempt for traditional American values?'” and “Ten minutes later we’re speeding down the freeway, Solo’s hatchback shuddering like a porta-potty in a 5.0 magnitude earthquake.” and “‘As for wondering if it’s okay to be who you are–that’s not a symptom of mental illness. That’s a symptom of being a person.'”Final note: Jeff did an amazing job with his debut book, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who loves diverse books. I loved it so much that I had to buy a hardcover copy for my personal library! Check it out!

Reviewer: openbook1000
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I enjoyed reading the book very much and found it both ...
Review: I enjoyed reading the book very much and found it both educational and entertaining. Jeff Garvin does a beautiful job of conveying character's emotions, and the descriptions of setting put you in the place of the story but don't get in the way. Park Hills high school feels like it could be my own, and the level of acceptance in that conservative environment is spot on.I am a teacher, and had a student come out to me as gender fluid last year. This story could basically have been hers/his - strict uniform school, other students making constant comments. While I did my best to be a safe listener and give that student the acceptance I was genuinely feeling, I didn't have the vocabulary I maybe needed to say what I needed to say. It came across anyhow. We have a wonderful relationship. We've both moved to different schools but I wish we could read it together. This book would have helped us talk about so much more, and give that student a chance to say, "Yes, this is what I am feeling" or "No, it's different for me because....." It would have helped me then, and it has better prepared me for the next student who is brave/desperate enough to say something.I think this book is important. Thank you, Jeff Garvin, for writing it.

Reviewer: Stoicstella
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I bought this book for a 30 days of Pride book review project. This is that review.
Review: I bought this book for a 30 days of Pride book review project. This is that review.“The first thing you’re going to want to know about me is: Am I a boy, or am I a girl?” Our first glimpse into our POV character Riley’s mind is an observation, presented almost as an accusation. The answer to that question is, “Both or Neither.” Riley is gender fluid, and about to start an anonymous blog, on the advice of a therapist (Dr. Anne), to vent the pent up feelings that inevitably arise from that identity, while living in a very binary society, especially when you add high-school and a prominent political family into the mix.We get to ride around in Riley’s head, facing parents who just don’t get it, braving the first day transferring to a new school, and walking what is described as “The Gauntlet” through an unfriendly lunch area every day. The real and imagined judgements of the outside world rain down upon us. We meet other outcasts, such as Solo, the nerd turned jock, whose sheer size shifted his social standing, and the “mysterious” Bec, who Riley constantly tries to define as “friend” or “more-than-friend,” with all the requisite teenage angst and self-deprecation.We, as it turns out, have been invited to walk in on Riley at a very transformative and eventful time in life. In fact, though the story takes place over a really short span, maybe only a month or two, Riley has some life altering experiences in that time, some more traumatic than others.There was a lot to like about this book. Riley is a fully realized and relatable character, and a hopeful, anxious, flawed, but very human face for gender fluidity, an often misunderstood and still underrepresented demographic. Because non-binary gender is messy, complicated and controversial, it becomes hard to talk about, but there are many teenagers like Riley who NEED to talk about it, and need to see it being talked about… if nothing else to be reassured that it exists outside of their own heads, that it is real and happening, that they are not alone.Jeff Garvin also manages to write a very apt description of functioning with anxiety. His descriptions of Riley’s impending anxiety attacks, or of the low level buzz of daily anxiety, like a headful of wasps, was just very in tune with my own experiences of dealing with anxiety, being claustrophobic in a crowded room, being overwhelmed by sensory input when your anxiety level is high, like loud sounds or bright lights being almost too much to handle. It seemed to be written by someone who really understood what being (just barely) functionally anxious feels like.It is a book that is very much designed to address issues, but I didn't feel like it forgot about its characters in the process… and (to directly contradict a few reviews that I skimmed after writing this) I never felt it lost the thread of story. Riley is a gender fluid teen in a world where that is not really very understood, so Riley spends a lot of time educating the reader on gender and gender politics, subtly and sometimes really not so subtly, but we are also learning about who Riley is as a human, more than as an example of someone gender fluid. In the end we get to find out, as Riley does, what kind of person Riley is going to be-- seperate from labels like boy, girl, gay, straight, advocate… or victim. I was surprised so many people felt there was no story here. I feel, in a coming of age story, the character development is the story. So, maybe the plot wasn't always in-your-face apparent, but I don't think it is fair to say it was altogether absent.There were a few things that I did struggle with, though.Garvin makes a conscious choice to never reveal Riley’s sex or birth-assigned gender. The point, of course, is that it doesn’t matter because it is divorced from who Riley is. The character Riley is not a boy or a girl. There are no pronouns used. Nobody refers to Riley as the congressman’s son or daughter. When Riley is having moments of gender dysmorphia, or even of attraction to a crush, Riley’s inner monologue never mentions any body parts that might give anything away. Riley describes the gendered clothes that must be worn as the “campaign costume,” and there is never any detail about what they look like or what gender they are enforcing. There is a sort of defiance in this, mirroring and matching Riley’s own defiance and verbal insistence on more than one occasion that it doesn’t matter what genitalia Riley has. And it is of course none of anyone’s business... But there is also something calculated and false about the way it is concealed from the reader. We aren't just a random observer on the street or an anonymous reader of Riley’s blog, we are supposed to be inside the character’s head and this piece of information, that Riley knows and is in fact struggling with, is just absent. For example, when Riley mentions feeling very feminine around Bec… something about Bec turns Riley’s “gender-dial” all the way to female...If Riley’s sex is male, I feel like, Riley is going to be aware of having a penis. To me, that seems like potentially a huge source of gender dysphoria. If Riley is feeling masculine, getting dressed in a way that doesn’t feel too feminine while having to deal with breasts that need flattened down or with menstruation… I feel like those things actually matter. Not revealing Riley’s physical sex or birth-assigned gender or the role Riley’s parents expect Riley to be performing in...it just almost feels like the author doesn’t trust us with the information, and at some points you can feel the intention in it. I understand why Garvin did it, but it was a stumbling block for me in connecting with the character.The other thing for me, which I am aware is petty, were just a couple of typos. I make typos you make typos. It happens...but a missing word or using a mistaken word pulls me out of the story for a minute, and then I have to try to reconnect. And typos in a published work, to me, just seem careless on the part of the editing and publishing teams.And this has nothing to do with anything… but my book has a weird “haircut.” The pages are not cut evenly in a section and stick out beyond the cover at an angle… literally like an asymmetrical haircut. Which isn't really a negative or a positive, except the pages got all bent in shipping and it makes it hard to fit neatly on the bookshelf without dog-earring them further. It's kind of a round peg in a square hole world situation… which I suppose is apt for the novel.Do I recommend this book? I do. It's weird because scanning other reviews, my likes and dislikes seem to be backwards to the other reviewers, my stumbling block was their favourite feature. So, as with anything, it is simply a matter of taste.So, at last, let me throw this book on my two rating scales invented for this project.The first scale I've decided to dub the Queer Counterculture Visibility Scale. It measures how I personally feel this book shines a light on less visible members of the community.Riley is a white upper-middle-class teenager, so Garvin isn't scoring high points right out of the gate, but a POV character that is gender fluid gets a lot of credit on my scale. Garvin also has a teensy little bit of diversity in his side characters. One of the first people Riley befriends is described as brown, and later as Samoan. Riley also interacts briefly with a variety of different transgendered and genderqueer characters. I'm going to weigh it in at: 4 out of 5 starsIf only because gender fluidity has been underrepresented, thus far.The second scale I’m just going to call the Genre Expectation scale, and it rates whether this book falls above, below, or pretty much bog-standard for expectations of the genre.This is a young adult, coming of age/ coming out story… and it does what it says on the tin. No genre bending revelations, or spectacular story twists. I think it's a perfectly enjoyable example of its genre. 3 out of 5 stars.It met my expectations.

Reviewer: Nathalie
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Really eye opening book. Very captivating. Read the whole thing in a few hours and cried multiple times. I am gonna read this a few times more.

Reviewer: Alice
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Loved this book and the general storyline, very impressed with the way in which it is written and how the main character 'Riley's gender assigned at birth is never revealed showing how well this is written and the delicacy and care which has noticeably been added to make this book perfect. I have regularly quoted fhsi book and hope to continue to. I have recommended this book to many people and will continue to. All-in-all an excellent book.

Reviewer: Silvia
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I loved this. The plot was very much character driven, with lots of exploring of lgbtq+ themes, especially about gender since the main character is genderfluid. I haven't read anything similar and I recommend it.

Reviewer: P. Lonergan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The thought of having a book with a genderfluid main character made me so happy that I tried to preorder it twice in two months. Having just finished following Riley along a bumpy path of acceptance and identity I am glad to have read such a charming, important book.It's not an easy read. What Riley goes through hurts on a human level. Sometimes, as all teens are, Riley is self-centred and obnoxious. Yet every moment feels believable instead of stilted or forced under some social justice agenda while still being open and informative.If I could go back to my teens and share one book with my teenage self, it would be this one.

Reviewer: SN
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: So wonderfully written. I gifted this book to a special someone and it was received with such high regard and compliment. Highly suggested read, especially for those that can relate to it.