Holden Sheppard

I bawled.

I don't usually cry when I read.

I cried at Boy Erased when I read it recently by Gary Connolly about the conversion therapy, trying to convert US teenagers to be straight.

I cried twice in this.

So at the end of chapter two, something really sad happens and I just fell apart crying.

And then at the very end of the book, I cried again.

It was so, there is such an aching tenderness to this novel, not just the love between the two boys that comes to a very sudden end.

And it's very tragic.

But it's also this inability of both of them, and especially Thomas, to be able to accept himself.

There's so much shame around who he is and what he is.

Yeah, I'll try not to give the spoilers.

So he has this rush of a sense that this person he knows, does he actually know him or is that just... I think that bit might be a spoiler, but he basically essentially sees someone who he thinks reminds him of Thomas.

And once he actually finds out who it is, that unfolds the rest of the two chapters, the second and third chapters.

Yeah, so they're across the schoolyard kind of thing.

And it's this real aching of wanting to know him better.

And actually, it's a mutual thing.

So they both are attracted to each other.

And they run around very much in secret.

And it's very much like a very safe, hidden thing that they do together.

It's beautiful.