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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?
"A sweet, emotional read affirming those who struggle to find a place within religions that profess to hate who they are." —Kirkus Reviews
"Boteju employs grounded and informative prose to deliver empathetic examinations of acceptance, guilt, and the pressure of meeting unrealistic expectations in this tenderly affirming novel." —Publishers Weekly
"Artfully articulates the beauty of community...Boteju's latest queer coming-of-age story offers a vulnerable look into the intersection of identity and religion." —School Library Journal
"Complex, gorgeous, and true, Messy Perfect lives up to its name. I loved it." —Elana K. Arnold, award-winning author of Damsel
"A very enjoyable novel that also conveys an important message: that no young person should have to choose between different parts of themselves and that, in the words of the main character, you should be able to be religious and queer and still be happy. This moving and heartwarming book is also a love letter to GSAs, by a writer who truly sees and understands the work so many students are doing to make their schools safer and more accepting for everyone." —Robin Stevenson, award-winning author of Queer History A–Z and Pride Puppy
This information about Messy Perfect was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tanya Boteju lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, British Columbia). Part-time, she teaches English to clever and sassy young people. The rest of her time, she uses writing as an excuse to eat pastries. Her debut novel, Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens, was named a Top Ten Indie Next Pick by the American Booksellers Association. Her second novel, Bruised, was selected as a Gold Standard book by the Junior Library Guild. Visit her at tanyaboteju.com.
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