Georgia Peaches // lesbian moves to conservative area, is asked to feign heterosexuality

A LESBIAN ROMANCE TEEN PLOT.

So you might like to think this just meant I spent all my time outside of work reading the book. No. I didn’t finish it faster. I had lots of things I needed to get done, lots of things I failed to get done, and a cute girl at work distracting me with her mere existence.

I received this book for free from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit, however, was quite timely for me in regard to articulating how it feels to be a lesbian and have misguided butterflies happening in the pit of your stomach when you have literally willed yourself to have the complete opposite for the sake of whatever purpose, in a new environment.

There’s also the whole trying-to-be-straight-to-please-other-people and briefly-considering-a-boyfriend-only-to-be-a-hundred-percent-NOPE that was totally relatable in a way I didn’t think anyone else could possibly understand. Because I don’t have a lot of gay friends; I have mostly straight or pan/bi friends. There’s a big difference, even if I try to avoid admitting it, between gay friends and friends who also like men, in that they love men and the most attraction I ever feel for them is them being aesthetically pleasing to look at.

The autistic side kick

I’m not super feeling the autistic side kick character. It made me feel weird, like there were exaggerated stereotypes and stigma in there that needn’t be to build character or progress the story.

The attraction

There was a paragraph I related to in an it’s-in-words kind of way:

B.T.B.’s sister keeps popping into my head. And … I couldn’t stop glancing her way … It’s stupid because I don’t even know her, but sometimes you see someone and there’s just this flicker. Like a light bulb that glows around the person, making them shine brighter than all the others. It’s not that they’re more attractive or smarter or funnier than anyone else. It’s just they have a combination of all the things that speak directly to you.

Religious rating

I didn’t personally find it as religious as it could be. I low-key wish it were slightly more so, considering the length of the novel and scenes that could be considered filler.

If you absolutely loathe books featuring religion of any kind — first of all, you should probably find a different kind of media to consume, because art forms many pull from religions to create metaphors and symbolize shit — you might find this book too religious.