To his relief, Dade is heading off to college in the fall, and only has this last summer to get through – though it’s turning out to be a tough one. His father has a girlfriend, his mother is self-medicating with alcohol and prescription drugs, and they are clearly on the road to divorce. And Dade is doing a fair amount of drinking himself.
Dade has a boyfriend, Pablo, but Pablo is in the closet, has a girlfriend, and is likelier to hit Dade than kiss him. When Dade meets Alex, and realizes what it can be like to have a real boyfriend who is interested in connecting emotionally as well as physically, and who isn’t ashamed of being gay, Dade calls it quits with Pablo, and comes out to his parents.
A missing autistic girl appears sporadically as a theme in the novel. While most people think she must be dead, there are rumors that she’s been seen in the movie theater and elsewhere, and one night while Dade is very drunk, he is sure he sees her in his back yard. He is kind of obsessed about her, and symbolically, her status of being lost, and possibly seen from time to time is reflective of what is going on for Dade emotionally as he goes through his journey of coming out.
What starts off as a difficult summer turns into a summer of self-discovery and growth. Not to be missed.
Teen Reads 