Returning to his hometown for a fresh start, a struggling teen must confront his past secrets and hidden desires for a second chance at love and happiness.
Kevin Summers wants to be loved, but love is complicated. Beneath the teen’s façade lies a secret struggle. His secure and happy boyhood gives way to the challenges of adolescence and the pressures of young adulthood, leaving him on the brink of hopelessness. As Kevin picks up the pieces of his life, he reunites with former friends and meets new ones, facing a pivotal choice: Is he ready to confront his fears and secret desires for a second chance at love and happiness?
A 2024 New Release, Boys Like Kevin invites readers to reflect upon their coming-of-age experiences of forbidden desires and self-discovery. This young adult literary fiction novel exemplifies the complexities of relationships and the resilience and hope required to find authenticity in oneself. Perfect for fans of heartfelt and introspective stories, Boys Like Kevin is a must-read journey of secrets and self-acceptance.
Quote: Yeah, I skimmed it. But the fact that he presents it in that manner--as a divorcee looking back on his childhood--that kind of stops it from being YA. It makes me think he hasn't read much, if any, YA. But that didn't bother me nearly so much as the fact that I was rather unable to find a single vivid description of a person or a room. And if he's read much gay coming of age gay fiction at all--the queer, sexually charged incidents of his youth are recounted in a manner that's rather lacking in both *ahem* passion and insight...
There's a bit where our narrator is an adolescent hiding in a closet and witnesses a near-act of homosexual sex by way of complicated bullying. This recalled to me a book I read maybe 20 years ago, Behind the Door, part of the gay, Jewish, Italian writer Giorgio Bassani's five-volume Novel of Ferrara, a modest epic about the quiet horrors of life under fascism. That book's title-giving incident of homophobic bullying also viewed from a closet is maybe a lot more complex than we can ask from a first-time hobbyist novelist, but he could have maybe pulled something profound out of the incident... Regardless, it doesn't feel like honest criticism was ever offered to this writer. It's dissapointing to me how much better it could have been. He's got a first draft. That's the hard part. Somebody at some point needed to tell him, show don't tell. Acolyte Press did better coming of age novels than this.
