Reviews and Comments

Let's start with the basics: Radclyffe's stories are well-written. Her language is exemplary, her story-building good.

And I don't normally read romance. So there's bias here - 'cause I'm having a damned hard time with her characters. They are, in a word, perfect. Not in the sense that they never do anything wrong, but in the sense that they are strong, ambitious, focused, driven, well-educated, and utterly, utterly inhuman.

There are, in this book, not a single first- or second-tier character who are not bigger than life. It grates.

And then there's the sex. Way too much for my taste, but it's something I can - and will - flip past. It's still well-written, yet also too much.

Fun. Confusing. Scary. Heartbreaking?

Perhaps not so much the latter, but KE Payne has managed to put the seventeenth year in the life of Clem (Clementine) into a virtual diary which is silly, ignorant, funny, sad, upset, angry, and confused as only a teenager can write.

She writes well, tho occasionally too adult - it is, perhaps, not easy for a grown person to mimic the thought processes of an adolescent, so I'll forgive her that one.

A quick romp through a very peculiar - and quite realistic - year in the life of a lesbian teenager.

Mind you, I can't quite recall having had this much heartache over my first crush on a girl, but it's been a while!