Emotionally not an easy read, but worth it in the end. I can see why it is controversial and why parents may feel uncomfortable with their child reading it, but that is probably why teens should read it! Jude makes for a fascinating main character and is always unapologetically himself, right to the very end.

Would probably recommend it to a more mature or older teen and definitely to adults. Might make an interesting book club pick, there would certainly be a lot to discuss.

Everyone was horrible in this novel, and I loved to see their decent.

Difficult to describe my feelings about this book. I can't say I enjoyed it but I do think it's well written and important. I struggled with the rawness of Jude's feelings and the unremitting bleakness of his life and I found the vulgarity of language & the descriptions of sordid sexual encounters uncomfortable but then a book doesn't have to be comfortable to be good, and this is good.

What did I just read?

When Everything Feels Like the Movies won a Governor General's Literary Award, and it's a finalist for Canada Reads 2015. So my opinion is probably not going to be popular. But I did not like it.

WAIT before you all start to yell at me, let me tell you what I DID like. This book is about Jude, a flamboyantly gay teen. He is confident and funny. He also protects his younger brother from their shitty home life. This is a book about how gay teenagers can be socially isolated and abused, and this is clearly important subject matter. It will hopefully lead to a lot of productive discussions about bullying and discrimination.

Jude deals with the constant discrimination he faces by immersing himself in an imaginary world. He pretends that he's a celebrity dogged by the paparazzi in LA, rather than a lonely teen tormented by bullies and largely ignored by everyone else. And herein lies the problem: Jude's defence is so good, not even the reader gets to see much below the surface. This means that, although I admired some of Jude's qualities, I never REALLY get to know him, feel engaged by him, or like him.

Read the rest of the review on the blog!

GG Award winner
Canada Reads
The controversy surrounding this one is pretty understandable ... the graphic sex and drug use by teens in a YA book is probably pretty scary for parents. But it felt real and was heart-breaking to imagine being in this kid's (ruby) shoes. I teared up a few time reading this.

This book was so interesting because for the first half I really didn't like the protagonist. And then you get some background about why he is the way he is and that all goes to hell. Such an interesting look at homophobia and teen relationships in general.

I definitely have some.... mixed feelings about this book. I had an issue with the insane amount of transphobia. Not only from the people at his school, which I expected, but from Jude himself, which in retrospect I also probably should have expected. A lot of the book was gross and uncomfortably sexual but that's a matter of taste I guess.

By the end of the book I enjoyed it. I am a huge fan of gritty realism and as someone who grew up queer in a small town there was definitely a /lot/ I related to. I think the experience of his life as so horrific that he had to pretend it was all unreal and a kind of show is something I understand well which was tbh a little heartbreaking. I also understood his impulse to push and make things worse even though he knew that's what he was doing.

So emotionally yes I think a lot of it was very good, but really I did think a lot of the sexual content was kind of gratuitous and not great. Mixed feelings.

This is a gritty book, and a challenging read once you realize how young the characters are. It’s meant to be gritty, messy and fantastical. Otherwise this would just be a horrific book about mean kids and the tragic way these kids are living their lives.
This book is important in so many ways and the approach the author took for writing though the lens of a film set was so interesting and refreshing. It takes a tragic hate crime and turns it into story that you can’t turn your back on.