I felt like this was a bit too on the nose at points, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Great cast of characters who had actual personalities (even the family members!)

One tiny thing irked me though--one moment that really alarmed me was when Simone says something about how she didn't know how to masturbate until she was in eighth grade as though it were something to be ashamed of or she were behind the curve. With such nice ace rep, how do you have a comment like that?! ( )

Camryn Garrett did a phenomenal job at portraying the life of an HIV-positive teenager. I had never seen that previously portrayed before reading this book. I hope this opens more doors for stories like these to be told. ( )

This is an important book and I'm glad it was written. I hope it's widely read. In my book reviews and IRL, I often mention for a variety of reasons that I did musical theater for nine years as a kid. It's easy to imagine based on that, plus the important conversations that happen in this book, this would be a glowing review. It's not. The book seems poorly put together and rams as many "now" and sexuality topics in, as it can. The high schoolers are wildly unrealistic, providing infodumps while whining, and I was not attached to them or any of the subplots, which I found stupid. I hate to admit it, but it's what I thought. The book tries to jump genres: HIV inspirational (which is needed!), friendship drama, suspense thriller, romance, and family drama. Pick two and stick to them! They were all poorly executed too, except the HIV and the romance. Everyone in this is LGBT+, except Simone and Miles, except oops, that's not how it is? Gimme a break. This is a commonly disliked trope in--I'm not gonna. Simone's fathers, especially the doctors, are creepy and controlling.

This book also wields the Sledgehammer of Symbology (thanks to Das_Mervin for the term) in that this is a novel about a teen in the late 2010s with HIV student-directing "Rent," a Broadway musical about the AIDS crisis of the 1980s told through 20-somethings who don't want to pay rent. So, high schools do the musical IRL, but a lot of it gets altered so as to not freak out parents. One high school replaced the word "AIDS" with "diabetes." Upon reading that statement, I walked around my apartment singing, "Roger's girlfriend left a note saying we've got diabetes, before slitting her wrists in the bathroom." I sang this to highlight the absurdity of switching two different diseases with two different social tolls, just to not alienate part of an audience. The song lyric probably gets cut out of high school performances anyway.

After going to great lengths to avoid mentioning Simone's bio-mom in-depth, to the point that I was genuinely not understanding the phrase "Dave is my half brother," both Dave and the bio-mom are used as a Road to Nowhere (thanks again to Das_Mervin for the term). Dave is frustrated that he and his mother are skipped over in a lot of the family's stories. This reminded me strongly of another book that had something similar. It had a guy cheat on his wife with a much younger woman, who waited patiently for months for him to leave his wife. The guy dies suddenly. His ex-wife and his widow are both at his funeral. My heart broke for the ex-wife as the speeches praising the widow went on and on, totally erasing the ex-wife and downplaying the teenage daughter as well. I'd have tiptoed out and probably cried if it were me. I was curious what this book would do with a similar concept. It's annoyingly over in a paragraph with no resolution.

I didn't laugh at any of the jokes or care about the ending, either. It was nice reading about someone who enjoys musical theater, though. ( )