True Letters from a Fictional Life, written by Kenneth Logan, reviewed by Bethany Bratney

Summary: Everyone in his small Vermont high school knows James Liddell. He’s a popular athlete who’s been on-again, off-again with Terese for years. But at night, when James can’t sleep, he writes letters that reveal his true feelings; letters so honest that he could never mail them. He tells Teresa how much he wants to like her as much as she likes him, he tells his soccer coach how much his off-hand homophobic remarks hurt, and he tells one of his best friends that he’s had a crush on him for years. These letters go into his locked desk drawer as James continues to hide his true feelings. He could never tell his friends or his parents that he’s gay. He knows they wouldn’t approve. The one openly gay boy at their school is ridiculed constantly, sometimes by his own friends. That’s not who he is or wants to be. When James meets an openly gay boy named Topher, who attends a different school, his emotions move from small, hypothetical crushes to big, real feelings. And when his letters are stolen and systematically mailed to their once-theoretical recipients, James realizes that he is going to be forced to explain those big feelings sooner than expected. Could he ever be the old James and the real James at the same time? 

Straight Talk for Librarians: While I have been looking for more nuanced, intersectional stories featuring LGBTQIA teens for the last few years, books that deal with coming out, especially in potentially difficult situations, will likely always have a place in school libraries. Letters from a Fictional Life shines particularly in its treatment of James’ sexual identity in a small community where everyone knows each other and all of the students at James school have grown up together. The struggle to understand and label oneself is always challenging, but James’ conflict feels especially severe to him because his prior experiences have led him to believe that he cannot continue to be who he always has been if he also comes out as gay. His two identities, in James’ mind, within his family and close community, are mutually exclusive. James’ relationships with his friends, while initially ripe with heteronormative “bro” humor, are strong and complex, providing a full range of realistic emotions and reactions to his revelation. While this book is not telling a new story and is unlikely to provide major surprises to many readers, it tells an always important story in a compulsively readable way without hiding the complicated emotions or even ugly behavior that people can exhibit when they are in the middle of an internal struggle. It deserves a place on your shelves.