I read If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo in a single day. I would not, nay could not, put it down. This novel focuses on the life of Amanda Hardy, a transgender teenager who moves to Tennessee to live with her father after multiple violent encounters in her mother's town outside of Atlanta. Amanda, who lived through transition supported by her mother, has barely spoken to her father but is assured that she'll have a safe home when she moves. So, like many teenagers, she anxiously begins her senior year of high school and sets out on her mission to "pass." Like so many high school students, she seeks belonging, safety and maybe a little romance (!), but hopes to do so without having to reveal her past. Amanda deals with a lot in this book: issues of identity, family, belonging, safety, sexuality, friendship and love all collide. But what Russo has done so masterfully is created a novel that centers around a trans-teenager without it feeling like a voyeuristic spectacle or a "all you ever needed to know about being trans" book. Rather, Amanda is a girl who wonders the same things that every teenager wonders: Am I normal? Where do I belong? Will anyone love me? Can I fit in?
What stuck with me longer after was Amanda's realization that, despite the fact that she lived in a small town, there were undoubtedly other people in her town and in her world who had the same questions and struggles she did. This was a book as much a teen romance as a thematic exploration of belonging in love, friendship, family, community and the bigger world. Read it. Read it. Read it.
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